


'A Girl Needs to Know'

by tigersilver



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:03:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl needs to know these things, really. Ginny Weasley is itching to rekindle her romance with Harry now the War is over and they have all returned to Hogwarts, But Harry is hesitant, and feels he has been changed far too much to be fair to her in a relationship. Frustrated and concerned over her ex-boyfriend’s well-being, Ginny seeks Love Guru Romilda Vane’s advice on exactly how to turn Harry’s attentions her way once again...or at very least to discover in which direction his lovely green eyes may seek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'A Girl Needs to Know'

**Author's Note:**

> Author/Artist LJ Name: tigersilver  
> Prompter: drarryisgreen  
> Prompt Number: #47  
> Title: ‘A Girl Needs To Know’  
> Pairing(s): Harry/Draco; (implied past Ginny/Harry; established Ron/Hermione & potential Romilda/Ginny  
> Summary: A girl needs to know these things, really. Ginny Weasley is itching to rekindle her romance with Harry now the War is over and they have all returned to Hogwarts, But Harry is hesitant, and feels he has been changed far too much to be fair to her in a relationship. Frustrated and concerned over her ex-boyfriend’s well-being, Ginny seeks Love Guru Romilda Vane’s advice on exactly how to turn Harry’s attentions her way once again...or at very least to discover in which direction his lovely green eyes may seek.  
> Rating: R  
> Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.  
> Warning(s): No bashing of anyone at all (not that I would!)  
> Epilogue compliant? Not Epilogue compliant. Just...not.  
> Word Count: 24,000  
> Author's Notes: This author adores to spy upon the boys from someone else’s point of view every now and again; it’s a bit of a kink, my own private titillation, this fond voyeurism. I hope you may share it, my dear Prompter, innocent as it is. Also, my heartfelt thanks extended to the Mods for allowing me participate and the very same deep-felt gratitude for my beautiful betas, L , V and D [’lonerofthepack’, ’vix_spes’ and ’drarryxlover’]. I have a special dedication list, as well, which I wish to include here: ’omi_ohmy’, ’mayfly_78’, ’nenne’, ’vaysh11’ and groolover You are all indubitably the crème de la crème, darlings.

[&H&D&]

 

Romilda Vane had always been the best go-to person for love magic. But when Ginny finally worked up the courage to ask her advice, she only giggled.

“Learnt my lesson, didn’t I?” She laughed, lounging back in her seat in the area set aside for senior student’s revision in the newly repaired Hogwarts Library and adjusting her robes beguilingly for benefit of a passing Seventh Year Hufflepuff boy. “Besides, I thought you and Harry were an item, Ginny?”

A toss of lovely long dark hair over a shapely shoulder cemented that statement quite firmly.

“I...ah.”

Ginny sighed wistfully, and dropped her chin to the pile of books before her, feeling her cheeks flush hot. She’d completed her essay on the magical properties of muggle electrical outlets days before with help from her Dad’s Owled notes; she was only even in the Library as an excuse to hunt down Romilda. It was a lovely early autumn day and she’d much rather be outside, and perhaps even on a broom aloft the Pitch, practicing. But needs must.

“Well, we were, once, but then Harry broke it off when he went into hiding,” she explained. “Said it wasn’t fair to me; being spoken for if he didn’t come back. Said it would be…awkward.”

“But he did,” Romilda opened her big dark eyes very wide and fluttered her generous lashes at Ginny. “Come back, I mean. Rather impressively, too. So, what’s the problem? And why do you need some ratty old spell to sort out if he loves you? I wouldn’t have thought Harry Potter would have any qualms about restaking his claim.”

“That’s exactly it,” Ginny replied, banging her chin gently on the topmost book cover. “He doesn’t want to stake his claim anymore. Says it all changed him, and now he’s not so sure what he wants, but he doesn’t think it’s a relationship. _Any_ relationship. It’s still not fair to me, he says, because he doesn’t want me thinking it might work out between us when it might not.”

“Okay.”

Humming, Romilda sat forward and began to pay proper attention to Ginny’s problem. This  involved rearranging her shortened skirts so her knees were covered completely and abruptly ceasing her always ongoing peripheral flirting with anything Wizard and still actively breathing. Any number of surrounding students seemed briefly and profoundly disappointed before getting on with their own work. Romilda didn’t pay the slightest heed.

“All right,” she nodded decisively when settled. “So he’s being noble, then. That’s nothing new. But you honestly believe he does still feel something romantic for you—is that right? And you want a chance to prove it.”

“Exactly!” Ginny bobbed her chin with alacrity, thumping it. “I think he’s just confused. It was awful for a while, what with—“

She gulped, closing her eyes for a moment; it was still difficult to dwell upon, all the loss.

“What I mean is, with Fred gone, and Mum and Dad being manky about it, and then Harry—oh, but! It’s all lovely jubbly now, of course it is, everything’s ducky, but. Well, Harry’s been left a little skittish. I think it sort of scared him off.” She very carefully didn’t go into the details of ‘it’. ‘It’ was still a dark time in Ginny’s young life and best left be. “Um. Made him think twice.”

“Ginny?” Romilda affixed her younger friend with a piercing gaze. “Ginny, you aren’t trying to force this on Harry, are you? Because I don’t perform those sorts of Charms or brew those types of potions anymore, I really don’t. As I’ve said, I learnt my lesson. I can’t help you if that’s what you really want.”

“No!” Ginny reeled back, flustered. “Oh, Merlin, _no_ , Romilda! I never would! The last thing I’d ever do is force Harry!”

“Well, brill, Ginny. I’m glad,” Romilda interjected, waving a calming hand at her. “And pipe down a bit; this _is_ still the Library. What can I help you with, then? Exactly what do you need from me?”

“I, um…ah.”

Now that it had come to the crux of the matter, Ginny hesitated, slumping back atop her pile of books. Perhaps it was better to let sleeping dragonets lay smoking, as the old saying went, and not trouble Harry any further as he was slowly adjusting back into student life. She loved him; always had, and whether it was to be romantic and hearts-and-flowers sort of love or just good old been-mates-for-ages love, it was precious to her, their closeness. But…it was curious, ever so curious, how Harry had changed his tune so drastically. She didn’t…didn’t quite understand. And it niggled at her, continually.

“It’s more…It’s not so much about _me_.” _Excepting it is_ , she didn’t say. But also not, really, either.

“Hmm-mmm.” Romilda was all ears and eyes on her, leaning forward. It eased Ginny’s nerves, and eased the words as they came, ever so slowly. “Yes? Go on.”

“It’s more I want him to realize what _he_ wants, Romilda.” Ginny waggled her chin on the topmost book binding, digging it into the stiff binding as much as she could. The sharp flat press of old leather to the soft skin of her jaw helped her concentrate. “You see, I think he’s actually still capable of a relationship, and I want him to realize it. That he may—he’s allowed. And if it happens to be me he wants to have one of those with, then that’s all to the good.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Yes, well.” Ginny smiled sadly at her friend. “There is that.”

For Romilda was a friend, for all that she was Ginny’s elder and a right mad flirt.

“So, you can help me out? I thought you could, of all people. You have that reputation, you know? You’re bloody good…at that. And I? I’m...not. So much.”

“Of course I can, Ginny,” Romilda smirked sweetly over Ginny’s sigh. “It’s not precisely an exacting sort of magic, really, though I do thank you kindly for the compliment. A certain deftness _is_ required.” She raised an arch eyebrow. “Fortunately for you, my sweet, there’s a whole raft of methods to help a person to sort out whom it is they love, or don’t. It’s only when you try to strong-arm someone love someone else you’re playing with Dark Magic.” Romilda looked even smugger for the barest instant, if possible. “And actually, that’s what I’ll be specializing in, after NEWTS. For a job.”

“What? Dark Magic?” Ginny gasped at her friend, startled. “Really, Romilda? But you just said you wouldn’t—”

“No, you silly little ninny,” Romilda chuckled. “Relationship counselling for Wizards and Witches, that’s what. The proper sort, with an office and all and a Ministry certificate on the wall. Because even a Wizard of the highest degree sometimes could use a little sage advice, can’t he? Look to your Harry, right? Well, that I can do and do very well, if I don’t say so myself. I’m known for it.”

“Uh-huh,” Ginny nodded, struck by the blinding sense of this statement. “Oh, yes. You are, actually.”

“And it seems as though you might end up my first paying client,” Romilda went on gaily. “You can’t blame me if I say this is one fortuitous opportunity, landed straight in my lap. A real plum in my hat, you might say. Providence—”

“Er…paying?” Ginny frowned, blinking slowly. “I, um, don’t have much money, Romilda. I don’t think I can—“

“Not like that, Ginny.” Romilda’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm as she leant even farther forward, bringing her face close enough to Ginny’s so she could speak very softly, a low beguiling murmur in the hush of the Library. “Thing is, what I really need is more information. Hard data. Numbers! Proof, if you will, if you see, that I can cast these certain spells or brew these exact potions and have them work over a longer time period than is usual. Days, or maybe even weeks. A great many people can’t sort out their heart’s desires in just one day and most of the research into love magic is horribly limited. It’s usually all about the sex. And sex is only one part of a relationship.”

“Oh.”

“Exactly, ‘oh’. There’s more, so much more! If I want to be able to earn my living at this after Hogwarts, then I need to present proof what I’m proposing to do for my clients will be effective. I need information, you see: something solid, something real. That I’m capable of making a difference, that I’m not just another star-struck young Witch, dabbling in what doesn’t concern her—or shouldn’t. That’s where you would come into it, m’love, so I ask you again—how _will_ you really feel about it if it’s not you Harry has feelings for? What if it’s someone else?”

She laid a hand down flat on the edges of the book Ginny had retucked her chin into and all the teasing fire in her dark gaze melted away.

“Love? What if it’s not what _you_ want? What then?”

Ginny blinked carefully down at the pile for a moment, pursing her lips. How would she feel, then? She’d only vaguely thought of it. Mostly, she’d only just _felt_.

“Ginny, dear.” Romilda extended a slim hand to pat Ginny gently on her bowed head. “Sometimes it’s better not to know. Young love torn asunder and all that. We can always simply forget we ever even had this conversation.”

“No. I think…I think, maybe…”

Ginny faltered, realizing with a touch of self-pride that perhaps she’d been pondering really very deeply over this situation they’d been thrust in, she and Harry, all along, and more deeply even than she’d truly realized. Just as maybe Harry had, as well, when he’d said they were meant to be friends. It was time to find an answer, one that would let them both move on. A girl had to know, really.

“…Maybe. Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I think I’d be…all right. As long as Harry was, too.”

She swallowed hard; regret and excitement tasted slightly funny, when mixed on the tongue.

“I really do love him, Rom, and I believe we’d be fantastic together; we were before, you know? But…it’s more important we’re both happy, in the end. That Harry’s happy.”

She set her shoulders firmly and met the gypsy-dark gaze full on, sitting straight up, as Mum always said one should when faced with difficulties.

“He’s pretty super, and I? I want to help him, and help myself, too. So…let’s do it. I’m ready, whatever it is you want from me. We’ll collect your proof for you and sort Harry at the same time, all right? And _me_.”

“And you! Right!” Romilda was wreathed in a sudden blinding smile. “Excellent! We’ve a deal, ducks, and I know just the charm we need to finally discover where the elusive Harry Potter’s heart lies—if that’s anywhere at all, of course. And all you’ll need to do for me is watch him, watch over him like a hawk. That’s it. All the payment I require.”

“Watch him,” Ginny echoed, allowing the feeling of this new task to settle upon her. Not so onerous, no. She watched Harry all the time, already. “All right.”

“Yes!”

Romilda practically sparkled; her excitement was that keen. She pumped a pretty fist in the air, cheering them both. Ginny had to grin; such enthusiasm was infectious, and the feeling of loft in her chest felt fabulous.

“You’ll tell me everything you observe after I cast this one p[particular spell I’m thinking of and I’ll do it entirely for free, all right?” Romilda carried on happily. “You’ll have your answer, Harry will sort out his heart’s priorities, and me? I’ll have everything I’ll ever need to convince the Governors at NEWTS—a real celebrity case study. Everyone wins.”

“Yes,” Ginny said, extending a hand across the pile of the books so Romilda could shake on it. “We have a deal, Romilda. Everyone wins.”

 

[&H&D&]

 

“It won’t harm him, right? This spell you’re casting? Or act like an Imperious? Because Harry and Imperious spells don’t work well together, Romilda, and I don’t want to even think of hurt—“

“Shh! Nothing of the sort, Ginny,” Romilda hushed her. They both peered cautiously around the corner, watching Harry where he sat with Ginny’s older brother Ron and their best friend Hermione.”It’s just a little thing I’m going to attach to his wand, that’s all. Acts like a Point Me, except it Points to one’s true love, if there is one. Sort of. At least I believe it—“

“Wow, really?” Ginny huffed out an amazed sigh. “That’s all there is to it?”

“Yes. Now, watch.”

It wasn’t much to see, really. Just a few flourishes of Romilda’s wand and then a tiny splash   of rainbow colour appearing like a miniature cloudburst for an instant, directly about where Harry routinely kept his wand holstered up his robe sleeve. Romilda muttered some additional rapid  foreign phrases, all jumbled together, and the cloud of colour seemed to sink into the fabric and then completely disappear. Harry and his friends never noticed a thing, involved as they were with shovelling down biscuits filched from luncheon, and chattering away a mile a minute.

Nor did any of the other students, milling about outside in the courtyard, enjoying the brilliant weather.

“Right, all sorted,” Romilda announced happily, practically preening. “Now, all you need do, Ginny, is follow Harry about for a bit and see what he does. Should be no more than a few days, all in all. He’ll be drawn to someone right quick if it’s working properly.”

“Drawn?”

“Yes, exactly. Like a muggle magnet, dearie.” Gypsy eyes glinted mischievously Ginny’s way. “Or rather his wand will be Pointing toward someone, and then he’ll want to spend his time with that person, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else.”

“His _wand_ will want to? How does that work, exactly?”

“The wand chooses the Wizard, right? Or the Witch.”

“Um-hmm,” Ginny nodded. “True.”

“Well, the wand can choose more than one, that’s all. It’s an old Ukrainian charm, and I’ve altered it to take the nasty bits out, but it should still work like the charm it is. Highly powerful and nicely long-lasting. Now go on with you, and stick to your Harry like a limpet, darling, and we’ll soon see if it’s effective as I’m hoping. And don’t forget to take notes! Off you go, love.”

“...Effective,” Ginny muttered, but she dutifully trotted off, the little shove which Romilda smartly applied to the small of her back helping considerably. “Take notes. Right, then.”

 

[&H&D&]

 

The first part, initiating contact with Harry, went remarkably well.

“Oh, hey, Gin.” Harry smiled genially at her when Ginny slid onto the bench next to where he’d plopped his arse. He scrubbed the last of the biscuit crumbs off his chin with a swipe of his hand and grinned even more widely, evidently quite chuffed to see her. “How are you?”

“Fine, Harry. You?”

“Pretty fair. Just off to Library, actually. Research for a Potions essay I have. Want to tag along?”

“Sure!”

Ginny blinked at her ex-boyfriend, merry as a grig. This was almost too simple, entirely easy-peasy, and it certainly seemed like Romilda’s spell was working already. Harry hadn’t invited her anywhere in ages, obviously feeling awkward after they’d broken up. Things were looking up, apparently. Not that he’d whipped out his wand and Pointed it at Ginny, either, but, hey—early days yet, right?

Of course, now she was signed up for the tedium of the Library for the second time in as many days and she had absolutely nothing to accomplish there, work-wise, but that was all right. She could manage. She beamed at her ex-boyfriend, feeling quite encouraged, feeling her cheeks go pink.

“Thanks, Harry.”

 

[&H&D&]

 

“Potter.”

“Malfoy.”

Ginny, head ostensibly buried in her book on _Exemplary Examples of the Seekers of the Earliest Eras_ , observed Harry’s every slightest move, just as Romilda had said to do. Thus far Harry hadn’t done a thing out of the ordinary. Well, that wasn’t quite true; he’d been scribbling away on some beast of a parchment for Potions for a whole hour plus some and with a fervour that didn’t exactly ring true to the old Harry. Other than that, though, he’d  had been just the same as always and they’d passed the time together well enough, chatting away desultorily about Quidditch and their various assignments, leafing through their various books.

Except now there was a Malfoy approaching, and Harry was up on his feet abruptly and chatting animatedly with _him_.

“What are you working on? Want to come join us?” Harry asked the young man, all curious bright eyes and with a hand darting forward to land casually on Malfoy’s sleeve,  just lightly. Malfoy looked a little startled at being accosted, but then he nodded. “Do come sit with us,” Harry urged him. “There’s plenty of room at our table.”

“Eh, sure?”

There was that unmistakeable voice, the posh accent which grated upon Ginny’s nerves, something fierce.

Ginny fought off a rising scowl. Harry had remarked before Malfoy was all right, that he’d pretty much saved Harry’s skin during the war that one time, but Ginny was still wary. The boy was a little too tall and a little too horribly handsome and his resemblance to his rotter of a dad was still eerie. But Harry always acknowledged Malfoy and was polite to him, ever since term had begun again, so Ginny was polite as well. After all, Mum had been pretty stern about how the sacrifices they’d all made during the war weren’t to go to waste.

“Ah, Weasleyett—eh—heh...heh...erm.” Malfoy nodded and curled up a lip in what was possibly meant to be the facsimile of a polite smile.  It went flashing away in an instant; he inhaled sharply,  his pointy chin up and looked to be mildly disgruntled—with himself! “Ah. Sorry about that. I meant... Miss Weasley. Good morning.”

“Hullo, good morning, but?” Ginny squeaked, which was horribly humiliating to do, and so buried her head further down in her book pages, blushing like mad, though all the while furtively watching the two of them, never taking her eyes away, even knowing it was equally horribly rude to stare. But they didn’t so much as notice it, her odd reaction, and seemed to have instantly locked gazes, warm green to cold grey. “Ah, er?”

Hmm, eyes only for one another? That was odd. Quite odd. Was it—was it Romilda’s  Spell? So soon? And working on Draco Malfoy— _Malfoy_?

Ginny gulped and fought to find her composure. This was just as she’d been angling for, wasn’t it? A chance to watch Harry interact with others, and maybe Point that damned wand of his.

“But, um, just…just ‘Ginny’ is fine?” she managed, channelling her Mum ferociously. “Call me Ginny?”

“Ginny, then.” Malfoy dutifully repeated, inclining his fair head again and sparing her the  briefest of cursory glances plus a second twitch of lip; another potential smile. Brief but not particularly unkind, the look he gave her, too. “Right, so? Potter.”

Malfoy turned his entire attention to Ginny’s companion at table  as he neatly inserted himself on a chair set opposite, settling in and leaning forward, both forearms set flat on the surface.

“What’re you working on, so seriously slaving away on this loveliest of days? That essay for Slughorn?”

“Yes,” Harry nodded enthusiastically, slumping back with a cheery grin. “I am, actually.”

He patted his books fondly and cast a happy grin at the furled reams he’d been scribbling on furiously for the previous hour or so.  Ginny winced reflexively at them; so much effort!  Really, Harry had become quite the uncommonly dedicated student lately, and that was very strange, too. Maybe he had changed, just as he’d insisted he had.

“And it’s not that horrible, this essay,” Harry went on cheerfully. “It’s going pretty well for me. I’ve got all the thirty sources for the ingredients Slug wanted listed with references, and the wrist movements for the second and fifteen counter-clockwise stirs described. ‘Course, they’re the very bugger and—”

“Most difficult bit, that, the final stir,” Malfoy agreed equably. “Yes.” He frowned, his brow wrinkling as he scanned over some of the text Harry had written. “…Except…?”

“Hmm?”

Ginny couldn’t help but notice that the two Wizards had been gradually moving closer and closer to one another across the narrow width of the study table. Their shoulders hunched forward, their necks bent, and both male chests were pressing insistently against the edge of the table.

“Except for _what_ , Malfoy?” Harry demanded impatiently, peering suspiciously from his unfinished essay to Malfoy’s slightly scrunched-up nose and squinty eyes. “Did I miss something?”

“Well.” Malfoy sighed, just barely, blowing out the breath with a purse to his lips, so the one corner of his mouth quirked up in an intriguing, not unattractive manner. He blinked cautiously at Harry and eased back a notch or two in his chair, settling his arms across his broad chest. “Well, not saying you have, Potter, but on the fifteenth?”

“Yeah?”  Harry, contrarily, leant closer, more than making up the distance. His hands reached out across the dark wood, fingertips tapping impatiently on the whorls and knots buried beneath the polish.

Ginny watched it all, as she was meant to do. When Malfoy abruptly slung his upper body forward again and nearly bumped up his arms to Harry’s, her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

In fact, so near had they drawn together, their two heads were almost bumping, fading scar a gingered hairsbreadth from elegant arch of gilt-gold eyebrow, it was purely startling. Ginny bit back a tiny gasp, for it was if they were behaving almost exactly as if muggle-magnetized, these two, just as Romilda had mentioned, and wouldn’t Rom be terribly pleased to hear?

And probably she should be writing this down, taking copious notes on Harry’s actions, but observing the two of them was just that much more fascinating.

 _Merlin! It_ is _, isn’t it? Oh, bollocks!_

Recalling her mission, Ginny turned her attention back to the boys with a little jolt. Malfoy was in midst of explaining his remark.

“Potter, the final and fifteenth stir starts with the left hand, true, and goes contrary-wise, describing one-inch diameter loops, so? _So_. _”_ He used a long pale forefinger to demonstrate the motion; Harry’s eyes followed it, fascinated. “Very tight loops, those, and exactingly regular, but then you have to switch up your hands just at the three-o’clock position. And you have to go about it as you’re turning your shoulders across the cauldron on the cross-back break, just easily like, smooth as butter, or you’ll lose your rhythm and muck it all up. Um…did you know? Because I didn’t.”

“What?” Harry exclaimed, staring aghast at the gently enquiring expression across from him. Ginny couldn’t help but think that look sat strangely on a face that was clearly more accustomed to broadcast arrogance. “No! Really?”

“Really.”

It was exceeding strange, but Malfoy seemed genuinely concerned that Harry might _not_ be aware ofthis arcane addendum to the action of some silly NEWTS-level potion-making. Ginny’s ears perked up, her fully piqued interest effectively wrenching the tiny part of her brain which had been devoted to pondering whether _she_ was, in fact, in any way bothered  by this intense little conversation going on right under her very nose.

No...not bothered so much as intrigued, very! She focussed on the action unfolding before her instead, and intently. For there was a great deal more happening right here at this particular  table than just a simple love-oriented Point Me spell; that is, if her feminine intuition wasn’t completely gone haywire. And there were no wands in sight, not yet.

“Tell me more?” Harry pleaded, sitting bolt upright and provoking an instant shy smile from his old enemy. “I had no idea of that; I’d no idea it was that bloody complicated, even. What else should I watching for, Draco?”

“No. There’s nothing, don’t worry your head over it.” Malfoy chuckled at Harry’s hopeful look, but it wasn’t in any way a nasty noise. He lounged  back, spreading his legs wide beneath the table and flapping a long pale hand about, as if to brush all Harry’s worries away. It seemed his most natural position, that perfectly assured sprawl. “No, no, I’m positive you would’ve sorted it out, at least when brewing your test cauldron, Potter. Like I said, the fifteenth is damnably tricky, but you’d have gotten it, I’m certain.”  

He examined his fingernails, peeping up at Harry over top them. Right through a sweep of pale lashes. Boy eyelashes, which were always so sinfully long, it seemed; damn them!

 _This? What was this?_ The hairs on the nape of Ginny’s neck rose, every one of them. Was…was Malfoy flirting? With Harry—her Harry?

“It’s deep in the footnotes; even I almost missed it, first time,” the young man went on, his tone modulating downwards;  so soft and so deep, ever so, that even Ginny felt a tiny thrill hearing it. And he’d not stopped his staring. Directly into Harry’s rapt eyes, just as Harry was just as fixedly staring into his cool grey ones. Ginny felt almost as if she’d been become nothing a ghost to them, or maybe just another dusty reference book, and that sitting to her and Harry’s own table! Too, she felt a little affront was in order, but then, she couldn’t afford it; she was on a mission. “Er…sorry about that,” Malfoy added, still kindly and with a tiny shrug. “Didn’t mean to send the wind up your arse, Potter.”

“No! You haven’t, not at all! If anything—!”

Manifestly Harry wasn’t troubled. Well, he was upset, but in a good way. He scrambled upright in his seat immediately, flinging his hands about madly through the air and grinning at Malfoy like the utter loon he could be, sometimes. No, not angered at all but more...pleased. Enormously pleased. As if Malfoy had just given him something of great use, and he was over the moon about it.

Ginny blinked at him, and then at Malfoy. Speaking of ‘new and different’?

“No. No problem, at all. At. All,” Harry nodded at Malfoy decisively. “More I should be thanking you!”

This is a bit of right corker!

Ginny’s feminine intuition had gone wild,  shifting from merely ‘mildly alert’ to  ‘practically hopping up and down and shrieking bloody murder’. For she’d not seen Harry this excited in a very long while, not since before the War had really gone grim.

“Draco! I really do!” Great Merlin, but Harry was burbling over; it was bit fetching to see. “Have to thank you, I mean. This is—this is super.”

He bounced about, grinning Ginny’s way and then every which way, actually, and coincidentally finally breaking the cute little bubble of intimacy the two boys had been inhabiting.

Ginny, against all reason, sighed over the loss of it. It had been sweet while it lasted...though she wasn’t entirely sure why she felt that way. ‘Cute’ absolutely applied to her ex-boyfriend, definitely, but Malfoy had never even come close. At least in her opinion.

 _Curious_.

“I _didn’t_ know any of that.” Harry squirmed about, evidently cast into an absolutely agony of intellectual ardour. “Not a bit of it, and I’d’ve bombed it on the practical, wouldn’t I? Of course I would’ve. You’ve just saved me, Draco; thank you!”

“Oh, _no_.” Harry’s glee was met with a barely banked satisfaction on Malfoy’s part, his eyes simmering with some nebulous emotion that was definitely quite warm, and specifically directed at Harry.

Ginny gasped, quietly, the sharp huff of breath ruffling her book’s pages. _Curiouser!_ Of course, neither of the Wizards noticed her.

Which was all right, really. What’s more, she’d not ever noticed the bloody icicle who was Draco Malfoy acting so friendly, ever! Then again, unlike most of the other Witches attending Hogwarts (and a decent percentage of the Wizards) Ginny didn’t devote much time to gazing after Draco Malfoy with lustful eyes. So she wouldn’t have, would she?

Until now.

“Probably not.” Malfoy was so quick to smirk across the table at Harry, his pale eyes gone all warm with glinting good humour and not icy at all, it was mind-boggling. “Slug loves you, Potter; you know he does. Worships the ground you walk on, the old fart. He’d have let it pass, I’m sure, but it would’ve affected your results. The potion would be a little off at the end, that’s all. Not as strong.”

Ginny gawped at Malfoy, point-blank. That was no smirk on his face, it was a smile. A smile!

“But not to worry, as now you do know, don’t you? No harm, no foul.”

Just a friendly smile on the surface, with nothing more complicated to it. Excepting that Malfoy’s attention was entirely glued to Harry, to the exclusion of all else. Excepting, they’d never been _this_ friendly.

“I’m sure you would’ve passed with flying colours, Potter. You hardly need help from the likes of me.”

And bloody well excepting that Malfoy was back at table’s edge again, just as Harry was, having finally settled, and had extended his long lean hands, just a little, but enough for the fingertips of both to dance quickly across the tops of Harry’s wrists in a little tickling motion. A bit of a tease, really, nothing more, but Harry only batted his own boy-lashes right back at Malfoy and left his always busy hands exactly where they’d come to rest.  

 _Curiouser and curiouser_ , Ginny concluded, and made certain to attune all her womanly senses to every little detail of Malfoy’s rapidly shifting expressions: first concerned, and then kind, and then joking and now very strangely attentive. Clearly there was something going on here. Ginny’s intuition never had failed her before; she couldn’t see any good reason for it to be awry this time.   

“I do, though!” Harry exclaimed cheerily. “Don’t make so little of it, will you? I feel better about it already—and!” He took a funny little gulp of air.  “And it’s all thanks to you, Draco. That’s fantastic! That’s absolutely super.”

His eyes were so very bright, so very eager and his coming-and-going grin gone a bit odd ‘round the corners, just as Malfoy’s had. Oddly intimate, it was, those wobbly, mate-y grimaces, and too, how exactly it was Harry and Malfoy were mirroring one another, really. Or...more like daft. But then? Ginny considered it. Boys, they were a bit daft, mostly.

“Now I know; now you’ve told me, Draco, I can barely stand to wait to try it out, the test brew.”

“Um.” Malfoy glanced away for an instant, in a rare show of vulnerability. _Really, now?_ _Shy?_ Ginny thought tentatively, but then stifled the idea, quite deliberately. She was imagining things, obviously. Malfoy _shy_? _Of course not!_  Never in his life, the arrogant wanker. “Ah, Potter? Potter.”

“Hmm?”

Once more their two heads had manage to poke up close together, light and dark, and once again they were returned to that disconcerting sort of staring contest they had going. Ginny was reminded of two birds, a’courting; maybe owls—a Snowy and an Elf, perhaps. Barmy ones, too. Barmy boys, rather.

Funnily enough, neither one seemed to recall at all that Ginny was even present, much less sitting quiet as a mouse with her jaw dropped and with her poor bemused  eyeballs no doubt swivelling back and forth between them like some gawper at a Bat-Mitten match.

“I…could.” Malfoy swallowed, pressing his lips together carefully, and Ginny followed avidly as Harry’s gaze flickered down  to take in that long white throat, prominent Adam’s apple very naked and visible where his shirt collar was unbuttoned and his tie casually loosened. “I could… maybe lend you a hand, if you like?”

“Oh, eh?” Harry’s face reflected vast puzzlement when he looked up. “Really?” Yet another foolish grin began creeping across his face; Malfoy seemed to inspire them. “You would do that for me?”

“Yes.” Malfoy blinked slowly at Harry, newly intent. “Of course, Potter.”

He shrugged it off as if it was nothing much, this vastly surprising offer. And he seemed to somehow snake his upper body closer to Harry’s, but maybe that was only Ginny’s impression.

“It’s only, I’ve just now completed my own, and I ran through all the stirring turns for it; that’s when I noticed the hitch in hands at the fifteenth. Very tricky business, almost got _me_ , so…well, if you like? I could use practicing it again. With a partner.”

“Okay, yes!” There was a blur of black robes flying right beside Ginny; she made herself small, wary of flapping elbows. “Let’s, then!”

Harry was already bounding to-and-fro, gathering his stray notes and books in an ungainly armful.

“Oh, no.” Malfoy immediately bent father forward across the table to offer a hand, catching up part of the load before it started a disastrous slide toward the floor. “No, no, no. Oh, no, watch out! It’s going! Here, wait a second, Potter; hold up, you mad prat. Harry!”

He was laughing again, was Malfoy, that indulgent little chuckle, and had slide himself  half-crouched ‘round the corner of the library table with fleet-footed grace besides, catching up Harry’s satchel as he went, jiggling it open one-handed as he gained  his full height, all so  the two of them were able to shove Harry’s things inside with some success.

Papers flew anyway, producing a small blizzard.  

“Wait, wait, will you?” Malfoy repeated, giggling as he stuffed the strays away, helping Harry despite his laughter. “Great Salazar, you’re mental, aren’t you? What lit your rocket, Potter? What’s the grand emergency?”

Ginny’s jaw dropped open, narrowly missing thumping solid upon her heaving breastbone, and making an embarrassing noise. Malfoy could laugh like that? Give loose to a fit of giggles? Unheard of!

“What—what?” Harry halted, as if struck, and stared up at Malfoy. “Is it.” He blinked slowly, suddenly seeming bereft. “Is it not...all right? You...you don’t want to?”

“No, no, no,” Malfoy replied quickly, shaking his head hard enough to leave his fringe swirling. “Nothing like that, Harry. Of course I want to, I just told you, it’s only—“

“What, then?” Harry insisted. “What’s wrong with now, Draco?”

He neatly took back the satchel edge and returned to cramming things into it insanely fast before fastening it up. Ginny released a silent sigh and sat back again, no longer quite so eager to kick Malfoy’s shins to bloody flinders. For a moment there, she’d quite thought she’d have to hex him a good ‘un, for mocking her Harry.

But apparently not.

“It’s only I’m not in a tearing rush here—it’s just when it’s convenient, I meant. For you, more than me. Doesn’t need be right this second; I’m about, you know.” Malfoy examined Harry’s earnestly upturned face ever so carefully. “Pretty much you can hunt me down me anytime. If you want, that is.”

“But _now_ is convenient, Draco,” Harry countered instantly, shrugging his satchel strap more firmly upon his shoulder. He shook his head swiftly, as if bewildered by Malfoy’s hesitance. “And I _do_ want. So, may we?Oh—Merlin! Ginny!”

Both Malfoy and Ginny jolted in place, staring at Harry’s arrested expression.

“Ginny?” He whipped round on a heel to face her, though clearly as an afterthought. “I almost forgot you were there; I’m so sorry. Gin, you don’t mind, do you? If we two go on now? It’s just I really want to get this assignment finished, and—“

“No, no.” Ginny raised one hand to shoo them off, albeit with a feeble enough wave. “’Course not.” She remembered, just barely, to smile politely at both boys, even the Slytherin one. No—especially the Slytherin one. As it looked to her as though he needed a little encouragement, maybe.  “Don’t mind me, Harry. Malfoy. Carry on, then.”

“Er? Miss…”

Malfoy was hovering just off Harry’s left flank, looming over his shoulder. He’d this horribly unguarded expression; she caught only an instant of it before he glanced her way, presumably for tacit permission to leave and bear an eager Harry away with him. Ginny kept a straight face with great effort. She’d not  been presented with an expression quite like that since the first time she’d happened to chance upon her own face in the mirror, immediately following the first snog she and Harry had ever shared.

“Um, Miss Ginny. Is it—it’s really all right? You don’t mind?” He looked so hopeful, Ginny nearly fell right off her chair.

“Wha-what?” she stuttered. “Malfoy?”

“I wasn’t intending to take Potter here away from you. That’s all. Hope you don’t mind it?”

Smitten—the Malfoy boy was smitten, Ginny realized. Sunk like a stone. And withher Harry! Glorious Godric!

“It’s fine, don’t fuss so, either of you,” she rushed to exclaim, glancing between them, but finding her gaze stayed mostly on Malfoy, who’d picked up a faint flush from somewhere.  It kicked up a faint murmur of disquiet in Ginny’s gut; she quelled it sternly. She was probably only a little hungry, after all; it was nearly luncheon. And this was nothing. Probably it was only Malfoy who was interested in that sort of way and not Harry, so much. Harry was just being Harry, really. More ‘Harry’ than he’d been in a long while, but that was all right, too. Ginny smiled, as wisely as she ever could—smiled and smiled, just as Mum said to do. She could afford to be generous, she was sure. “That essay comes first, Harry, and I’m fine here. In fact, I may just—“

“Thanks, Gin; thanks a bunch!” Harry interrupted her, probably not even realizing he was being wildly rude, and turned to grasp firmly at Malfoy’s elbow, yanking on a neatened pleat. “Come on, Draco, this way. Time’s ticking away and I know exactly where we can go do it, in private.”

He dragged harder when Malfoy automatically resisted.

“You’re sure of this?” Ginny heard Malfoy mumble, but only through a sudden buzz of blood in her own ears. “Harry?”

“Yes! Of course I am. Now, come on.”

 _Do it?_ Ginny’s mind reeled. _Already?_

No, no, _couldn’t be_. Harry only meant the practice for his all-important brew, of course. That’s what they were ‘doing’, these two idiots. Not at all that he and Malfoy were immediately off to have a snog, or worse yet, a shag—right?

Frankly, Ginny wasn’t so certain Harry would even notice it if Malfoy were to attempt a little grope. He seemed all caught up in his bloody schoolwork.

“Go on, you,” she told them, making more shooing motions with her hands, “Be about it.” If only to stop herself from thinking along those lines. As all the mental lines she was drawing seemed to be turning out more like mad doodles!

“Cheers. See you later, Gin!” Harry sang out, Malfoy safely in tow.

“Yes, er. Later, Ginny,” the other boy threw hastily over his shoulder, as Harry hauled him off, never waiting. Not that he was resisting all that much, either, as far as Ginny could tell. “Thank you. Sorry for the—”

A burst of Harry’s excited burblings about the potions essay over-spilt the last of Malfoy’s polite words, completely drowning them, but no matter.  They were exiting the Library together at a fast pace before Ginny could even begin to manage even one more mildly appalled blink in their wake.

“Huh,” Ginny grunted softly. “Right, then. Okay.”

Right, time to engage in a bit of brainwork, then; this situation seemed to call for some cogitation. What had she just witnessed here, for instance? This was a mind-bending turn of events, wasn’t it? Was Romilda’s altered Ukrainian Charm truly that strong, and so fast-acting? And, erm...Wandless?

But…then again, maybe not. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Rom’s Charm. Harry had spent an inordinate amount of time trailing about after Malfoy, back when he’d been in his Sixth. And hadn’t Ginny’s older brother Ron always complained bitterly of him following them everywhere, in the old days? And then too, there were quite a few at Hogwarts who were openly enamoured of Harry; it wasn’t at all surprising to learn Malfoy might number one of them.

“You know? I don’t bloody well think so, boy-os,” she muttered at last, and darkly, gathering up her own few things and stuffing them away in her bag. “I don’t ruddy well believe I’m just going to sit here and allow this. You’re not getting away from me that easily; I’ve a mission!”

She grinned fiendishly as she tore off, chasing after the two boys. If her womanly hunch was correct she had a very decent idea of exactly where Harry was taking Malfoy, and it would be easy enough to find a way to spy on them. She wasn’t a Weasley for nothing!

“No!” she told herself aloud as she sped along the hidden byways she’d learnt when the Carrows were running Hogwarts. “I’m not about to miss out on this, not a chance. For Romilda, then! For _research_!”

 

[&H&D&]

 

A quick dash down a few hidden corridors and through any number of tapestry-disguised doorways, all learnt from the last horrid year, and then Ginny was neatly situated in a tiny alcove in the rear of the third floor Girl’s Lav. Ready to observe, Wall Bending Oraculis Enhancement Charm, Disguising Dust of Deceit and Extendible Ear in place and at the ready. Thank Merlin her elder brothers had always ensured she’s an emergency pack tucked away in her satchel.

It was rather shocking, for just a moment, to absorb the striking image of just how close-up-and-personal one Draco Malfoy had gotten to one Harry Potter in the few moments it had taken Ginny to leg it from the Library to the Lav.

Malfoy, that devious wanker!

He was standing tall, positioned just behind Harry, very closely behind him, actually, so his chest and upper thighs budged right up against Harry’s spine and bum and the backs of his knees. So close his larger longer feet in their posh brogues were planted right on the outside edges of Harry’s ratty old trainers. And he had his arms loosely extended past Harry’s torso, and his long fingers were lightly encircling Harry’s wrists, and he seemed to be bent on murmuring sweet nothings into one half-obscured manly ear even as Harry’s left arm described an uneven swoop through the air. Placed directly before Harry was what looked to be a conjured cauldron on a tripod; this was what his stirring arm was in motion over, the rod clutched firmly in hand. An empty cauldron, naturally, as they weren’t actually brewing but only cycling through the rote movements of the stirring process.

For all practical intents and purposes this git Malfoy was openly embracing Giny’s ex, just as any lover would. Any ardent lover, that was, and then there was Ginny’s former boyfriend, tacitly allowing it.

Ginny’s gut did a little flip and a squirm; the very back of her gullet suddenly tasted of bitter acid. By rights, she should be monstrously jealous, yes? This was _Harry,_ her beloved, and there was _Malfoy_ , who might still be a giant git, and well…Malfoy was so very much a part of Harry’s usually highly guarded personal space; honestly, he was practically Harry’s Siamese twin.  

“Then say ‘verso, verso’, Harry,” the grabby prat was muttering softly, and the ‘sweet nothings’ Ginny dourly suspected of him proved to be the words of the dratted potion’s incantation.  She squinted at them, highly suspicious regardless, and of Malfoy in particular. Because, of course...Malfoy, right?

“…but very slowly, just roll your ‘R’s’, alright—good. And switch! Yes, that’s perfect, Harry; right first time—don’t stop now! Right, and then chant with me: ‘contra, contra, contra- _mun_ diment.’”

“Contra, contra.” Harry hastily repeated the syllables; Ginny strained to hear, to see them both, suddenly so much in concert, and then also take in all that the subtle motions of both the boy’s bodies as they shifted attention solely to their work. “Contra- _mun_ diment!”

A single rose-coloured spark drifted up from the point of Harry’s stirring rod, signalling success, Ginny supposed. It popped out of existence like a tiny firework would and was gone.

“Excellent,” Malfoy nodded happily.  “Did you catch the colour of that; did you? And the clarity.” He bobbed his chin at the faux cauldron; there must be a fake potion inside, Ginny supposed.  “That’s so much improved over the first time, and it’s all in that last stir. You’re a bloody natural, Harry, when you want to be. A quick study.”

“Really? Yeah?” Harry craned his neck about so he could peer up,  eyes alight. “You mean it?”

“Yes.” Malfoy was all bland-faced approval. “Absolutely.”

He inclined his head decisively, as if enjoying the last word on the subject of Harry’s progress.

“Like I said, it took me several tries to work it out. But let’s practice it again, to make sure, shall we? Snape always did advise me,” this with an exaggerated waggle of eyebrows, “’repetition to achieve perfection’, Draco.”

He somehow pulled from his broad chest and long throat a perfect mimicry of their old Potion’s professor’s deadpan delivery. Harry giggled aloud at hearing him, beaming up broadly.

“’Course we shall!”

“Here we go, then.” Malfoy replanted his feet, subtly shuffling, and the other boy followed along, twisting back round to face their mock-cauldron. They began a second time—or maybe it was the third, already; Ginny wasn’t certain--gesturing and speaking the words of the spell in tandem. The murmur of male voices echoed soothingly through the lav, picking up baritone and tenor echoes.

 _All right, fine._ There was a great dealing of touching going on before her shocked eyes, but it was all for the sake of knowledge, Ginny assumed. Malfoy was teaching Harry something; that was all. _Well and good._

Ginny’s stomach settled out with a parting small rumble. Really, this was clearly an innocent enough sort of touching, what was going on between them. Malfoy was just helping Harry with his work, that was all, _really_. Just…helping.

She peered harder at the two of them, eyes narrowed, as they each  inhaled  simultaneously, chests rising and falling together, and then began the process a third time. Or a fourth; who knew? But there was nothing, really, to be jealous of. Was there?

“Verso, verso,” Harry stated firmly, confidently, and Malfoy leaned into him with a wordless croon of approval. “Contra, contra, contra-mun-d-ment.”

A left-handed flourish finished it off.

“Brilliant.” Grey eyes sparkled merrily; Ginny had never seen Malfoy’s cold demeanour so relaxed, so cheerful. “Well done, you.”

It was a further spur, Malfoy’s face. Ginny sat as far forward as she could, tucked in her cramped hiding spot, straining to hear them, to see them. As their voices had gone all soft and low, and bursting full of mutual admiration.

“Thanks so much, Draco.” Harry, it seemed, couldn’t seem to stop thanking Malfoy enough. In fact, he’d not shut up about it since the Library, Ginny thought, wryly. “Couldn’t have managed it without you.”

“’Course you could’ve. But—um, just the one more time, Harry?” Malfoy actually blushed scarlet as he suggested it, which Ginny caught but Harry didn’t, staring down at his stirring rod as he was. “For luck, if you want. A bonus.”

“Right-oh,” Harry giggled again. “Luck is always a bonus.”

 _Oh…oh!_ Ginny frowned. _Oh?_

Another go-‘round? Like they really needed it? Anyone would think Malfoy was reluctant to let Harry go. And that peculiar look on Malfoy’s face? Harry couldn’t possibly see it, but Ginny could, from her vantage point. It was rapt sort of gaze, set solidly in a glazed-over and wistful expression, and she watched with widened eyes as Malfoy quickly licked his lips, then bit at them, one white canine just nipping gently into the fullness of the lower one, depressing it. And all the while  he was doing that he was also bending  his whole person just a tad farther into Harry’s slighter one, essentially  engaging every bit of him he could just a miniscule degree more firmly with  Harry’s determined form.

As if he couldn’t bear to lose contact.

Harry, meanwhile, merely stuck the tip of his tongue out, a bit sternly, and chanted, stirring. He didn’t notice a thing.

Ginny blinked, nearly missing it, Malfoy’s last tiny slip from grace. The sweet bow of them both, those manly defined lips, but damp and reddened and somehow naive yet, they descended ever so carefully from above and just brushed against Harry’s springing hair—once, twice, a third time. It was all only for an mere instant before he drew back again, just as carefully, but  Ginny’s sharp eyes saw Malfoy’s pale lids lower briefly, ever so briefly, as if he had gotten himself a sudden sharp pain.

A pang she could feel echoing in her own chest. There was such a taut air of longing to his eerily handsome face; such an air! Nearly rocked her right back on her heels, just to see.

“…Perfect.” Malfoy croaked. He cleared his throat, easing back another scant inch; a flash of relief lit his features, oddly enough. “Erm, just right.”

“Thanks,” Harry replied cheerily, skewing himself about to grin obliviously up at the other boy. “Again, couldn’t have managed without you. You’re champion, Draco, for helping me.”

 _Oh, my!_ Ginny gulped, uneasy. _Now what?_

“Oh...yes,” Malfoy replied instantly, flustered. “I mean—no! It was all very well done. On your part.”

 _Okay_ , Ginny thought, her lips tightening. Adoration that had been, plain and simple, on Malfoy’s, and Ginny recognized it instantly, as surely as she’d recognize her own wand. It had been part of her, once, that precise feeling for Harry. She’d felt the exact same, and for the same exact Wizard.

”Very well done, indeed.” Malfoy was yet praising Harry to the altitudes; he sounded the veriest ninny, but Harry didn’t seem to mind it, or even catch on.  “I think you’ve got it down pat now, Harry, good as Snape ever did.  Slug’ll fall over himself, giving you all the high marks in lecture. Fact, I’d bet there’ll be none left for the rest of us poor sods, you’ll see. And me, I’ll go down in flames, I expect, no matter how I do. You know he doesn’t much like me.”

Funnily enough, Ginny thought, Malfoy didn’t seem too bothered by it, Slughorn’s likely reaction. More wryly accepting than anything.

“Flatterer! Of course you shan’t. You’re the bloody master, aren’t you? Snape’s best ever pupil, Harry scoffed instantly. And then jumped in Malfoy’s grip, literally. “Oh...ah. Hey?”  

Ginny took a deep breath, holding it for a long moment of intense contemplation. Across the room, Malfoy tensed visibly, his spine going taut under the drape of his robes. His hands fells off Harry’s wrists ever so slowly, and his face blanked out. In a flash he was returned to the arse Ginny had known and disliked, all during Sixth Year: cold, unapproachable...unhappy.

“...Yes?”

 _No_ , upon second thought and maybe even third and fourth thoughts, this was _nothing_ innocent, exactly. Not—not horrible nor offensive, either, nor particularly painful to see sort of happening as it was happening, and that right before her very own eyes. Instead it was more a scene between the two boys that had become very, very private indeed. Very much owned by them, and not meant to be privy to any onlookers, no matter how sympathetic they might be. At least for Draco Malfoy. And Ginny was rapidly starting to rethink as to whether Romilda needed to know about this moment, either. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with any old Point-Me Charm.

There _were_ limits.

“Hey, Draco?”  Harry had turned about within Malfoy’s loose grasp, and was looking up to him, eyes intent. “I’ve been meaning to—augh! Look, I’ve been _wanting_ to! Er? Ah? You know, I still have—it.”

He gusted out a tiny sigh and Malfoy stared down, cool clear eyes wide and curious. The longing look in them Ginny had witnessed ever so briefly had been cleanly erased; he was nothing more than friendly. And curious, of course. As was Ginny.

“ _It_? Hmm? What is _it_ , Harry? That you have.”

“Oh, you know.” Harry swallowed, shuffling on his feet for a second. “The, um. Your...um?” He glanced down and then away entirely, scanning the boring lav for an instant before daring to raise his eyes to meet Malfoy’s again. “Look, here. I…I still have your old wand. Draco, I need to give it back to you, alright? _Need_ to.”

“Erm, ah? _My_ old wand?”

“Yes! And I’ve been meaning to return it you for ages and ages, now, and never got round to it. Now’s the perfect time, what? We’re together, yeah? We can do this! In fact, let’s go do this, right now.”

Ginny had to stuff back a gasp of confused wonderment. _Harry_ was in possession of Draco Malfoy’s wand? Since when had that happened?

And it seemed as though Malfoy was just as honestly bewildered.

“ _Par_ -pardon?” He blinked rapidly, his hands falling away and dropping to his sides with a muffled thump.  He shook his head fiercely, sending his fringe flying.  “You mean, you mean to say...you want to give it back to me, Harry? Why ever…?” He swallowed fiercely, scrubbing a quick palm across his face. “Would you.”

Ginny had a quiet little gawp at him from her concealing corner. Why was he so surprised? As if Harry’s need to do the right thing by him were completely shattering?

“Do that?”

She sniffed, insulted for Harry’s sake. Clearly this Malfoy didn’t understand Gryffindors.

“Well, of course I do, old prat,” Harry replied shortly, shrugging. “I hardly want to keep it from you, do I? _Not_ remotely!”

“I—“

“It’s yours, isn’t it?”

Malfoy opened his mouth. And simply stood there, staring.

“And not mine to keep,” Harry went on, as if this all were nothing. And maybe it was nothing; Ginny didn’t know.  “But here, Draco; let’s not do this in here, okay?”

“Do _what_ , Harry?” Malfoy was still perplexed, perhaps even more so. “ _What_ , now?”

Harry, entirely at his ease and not seeming to mind at all that for several long moments he’d just been practically hugged to smithereens by Malfoy,  took a step sideways and forward, turning about to deal with the remains of their mutual practice. A careless gesture with his wand—the old hawthorn one Ginny was familiar with for ages, she noted—had the Transfigured cauldron and tripod returned to their original forms: a used up toilet roll and a wad of discarded chewing gum. He tucked his wand back up his sleeve without even a cursory glance at it. Not once did it ever Point anywhere near Malfoy’s still form.

 _Oh, dear!_ _Is that?_

Ginny, apparently, was the only one of the three to note Harry’s wand shone with a strange rainbow-hued iridescence as it shifted. Her lips parted with a silent ‘Oh!’ of appreciation; it was so pretty, this old Charm. That must be Romilda’s spell, still very much active—right?

But? But what was going on here? Exactly?

“Potter.” For a second she was reminded of the old Malfoy, the one with the sneer. “Potter, explain, can’t you? Cryptic git.”

“I don’t exactly want to hand your wand back to you in a loo, Draco,” Harry replied firmly, spinning about again, a minor whirlwind of bustle. He frowned, taking in the mundane view and all its drab, dripping lack of elegance. “Seems a bit disrespectful to me, somehow. And loos aren’t exactly our best places, are they? So let’s go somewhere else.  Like to do this properly.”

“Oh!” Malfoy’s eyebrows climbed almost ridiculously quickly, all puzzlement lost to a quick understanding. “You meant? But, no! Don’t even think about it—don’t waste your time. That was nothing, Harry, and long ago, now. I’m completely well, fully healed—the dittany, remember? And I—I do happen know you never meant to—ah!”

“I never, ever did—” Harry was quick to agree, gone from determinedly expectant to scowling fiercely, and turning three different shades of white, pink and red in between, all in seconds. He bounced on his heels, throwing up his hands, only to scrabble at Malfoy’s lapels for emphasis. “It was a mistake, Draco—the book? Snape’s old book. That was why— _I’d_ no idea.”

“Book? What book? No. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, but—No, just no.” Malfoy was literally stuttering, his words falling all over themselves in the rush to come out, and not a one of them made a speck of sense to Ginny. “I know, but...Harry?”

She saw he was  frowning also, Malfoy, especially after his puzzling outburst, just as fiercely as Ginny found herself frowning, for she understood not a word of what was passing between them,  but then again—Malfoy  wasn’t glowering down _at_ Harry. It was more as if he was lost in thought or seeing pictures in his head Ginny couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“What, Draco?”

“Harry? It’s only? I didn’t know—didn’t even think—Harry, you really still have it? My old...”

“Yes, of course I do,” Harry snorted, managing to express utter disdain by practically shrugging his entire body. “Not as if I was planning to bin it, Draco. So? _May_ we go now? It’s important. I want it done now, as soon as we may.”

 _Go, again?_ Ginny scowled blackly at her fists where they rested upon her bent knees. She must’ve have curled them into tight little balls of frustration without even realizing it. _Merlin!_ The boys were bounding off to yet some other location, and all on a whim of Harry’s, and all in the course of an hour? _Bloody hell._

Ginny snorted under her breath, irritated with them. All this mad rushing about; she’d never keep up, not at this pace.

“Well, erm.” Malfoy retreated strategically, glancing about him and shrugging  “I suppose. If you want. I…guess. We might.”

“Merlin, don’t fall over yourself with enthusiasm, Draco,” Harry laughed lightly. “It’s not like this should even be a surprise.”

“Yeah? Well, it is!” Malfoy protested instantly. “To me, at least.” He glared down at Harry, all at once both ferocious and paler than candle wax, and Ginny was stunned at how quickly the old Malfoy could return to the fore. “You never liked me, before, Harry, never gave a hoot for me, did you? So why would I even think you’d keep my old wand for me? Be rational, pudding-head. This is a little unexpected, alright? ” He scowled again at Harry, but Ginny could see there was no heat to it. “Not that it’s unappreciated, nitwit.”

“Paddy whacks!” Harry rejoined, entirely nonsensically, and Ginny watched appalled as both boys burst out laughing. Maniacally, and all but falling over themselves with glee.

 _Hmph! What?_ What _was it they were rattling on about? Bugger!_ Give the dog a bone, _wasn’t it? And this would require a great lot more effort_ , Ginny concluded direfully, _and bother_.

She gritted her back teeth, hearing the grind echoing in her inner ear. This was becoming a very large bother, actually. That is, if she was to continue  dogging Harry’s every little movement around the environs of the school—and now also Malfoy’s; seemed they were joined at the hip recently. But then again, if she didn’t bother herself, she’d likely not catch something crucially important, such as Romilda’s promised Point Me in action. And every move they made was crucial, as Ginny wasn’t at all certain this was Romilda’s spell working on Harry’s wand in quite the way Romilda had claimed it would do.

No. Circumstantial evidence, that was what Ginny had in hand, and that was all she really had to show, least at this moment. For at no specific instance in all this time spent together had Harry ever actually whipped out his wand and watched it perform a romantically inclined indicator at one Draco Malfoy entirely of its own volition, with or without Harry’s probable accompanying amazement. Nor had he been drawn to Malfoy—handsome as he was, and even being as gracious as he was, the sly git—or even thrust at him by some overwhelming outside force and forced to realize that here before his very eyes was his potential life mate. Or boyfriend. Or...but no. Nothing of the sort.

All they’d done was get a little too close together, and that because Malfoy had been teaching Harry to the motions of some stupid stirring trick. They’d not kissed, they’d not even flirted. Not consciously, at least. Malfoy hadn’t even been groping Harry, not really.

Ginny huffed. _Boys!_

In fact, all she’d honestly be able to report to Romilda was that Malfoy was quite ardently attracted to Harry and Harry was quite comfortable with Malfoy in a happy, mate-y sort of way. Which was startling at odds from the norm Ginny was accustomed to, yes, but not…exactly…what she’d been expecting to see, either. Wasn’t it all supposed to be more dramatic? Wands being whipped out and brandished about and dazzling charms bringing these two blokes together?

 _Sod it._ It was a puzzle. A bother.

Ginny scowled even more darkly, till the whole of her face felt completely creased with worry.

These two idiots aside, this entire situation she’d found herself in was already edging well on its way to feeling a bit precarious, morally and ethically. Odds were very good Mum wouldn’t care for it, did she but know. All the ‘observing’ Romilda required was beginning to feel truly intrusive. And now it seemed as if she must descend to the lowest level of the nastiest sort of informant: become a closet pervert, a voyeur, filthy rotten as that idea was, if she wanted to see what was to occur next between these two.

‘Course, Ginny did want to know. And so did Romilda.

But maybe not so soon in the game. After all, it hadn’t been so long ago they were all three sitting in the Library together, sharing a table, and Malfoy hadn’t even been a consideration in the puzzle that was Ginny’s ex-boyfriend’s behaviour.

Bother! Being conflicted did not feel so very nice!

“Tempus.” Fortunately, Harry happened to catch sight of his watch face and gasped aloud at the time. Her hero! A diversion, at last!

“Bugger!” he shouted, exceptionally flustered. “I’m late _again_. Ron’s been expecting me for ages. I have to go, Draco. I’m so sorry.”

“Really?” Malfoy seemed more relieved than anything by this sudden announcement of Harry’s. Ginny caught herself grinning in sympathy; so was she! Saved by her stupid elder brother! “You have to go. Er, ah.  What a…pity, Harry. So sad, that.” Ginny peered at him; Malfoy’s entire body seemed lighter, as if he’d just been handed a reprieve or something. “And here I was, free the remainder of the afternoon. Oh, well…we could maybe—some other time—if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, Merlin—shit! I really _am_! Late, and so sorry for this, Draco.”

“Some other...time…oh, dear. Right...” Malfoy’s voice trailed off, drifting into a mumble of uncertainty, but Harry didn’t seem to hear him, as he was darting about, cancelling the summoned fake cauldron, packing up his references and newly revised Potions essay.  “Right, then.” Malfoy swallowed hard and watched with bemusement as Harry caught up his discarded school robes, shrugging into them haphazardly. “…Harry?”

“Shit sticks! We’ll have to do it some other time, Draco. I’m going to catch hell as it is.” Harry groaned piteously, rolling his eyes at himself and apparently oblivious to the perplexed smile Malfoy offered him. He took up his satchel and scowled miserably as he swung it about himself, dragging his robe’s hems together as he went. “No, really, I’m so, _so_ sorry. I meant to—well…You know. I meant to make it right again. And now seemed like such a good time.”

“But it’s fine, Harry,” Malfoy was quick to assure him, his smile brightening considerably. “Perfectly all right, I’m sure. Some other time, then. Maybe next wee—”

“Tomorrow,” Harry announced decisively. “We’ll do it tomorrow, and we’ll meet up down by the Lake, alright? I know a place. Or, better yet, meet me by the Whomping Willow. There’s an even more brilliant place than the docks. They’re far to open to view; anyone could come along and find us there.” He caught hold on of Malfoy’s lapels and gave them a little tug, going up on tiptoe to stare at the other boy confidingly. “We’ll be needing some privacy for this, and really, I know them all, all the secret places, and I can get us there and back without being seen; trust me. It just—it just needs to be private. So trust me.”

“Trust you?  I can manage that, I think.” Malfoy blinked tentatively at Harry’s fierce nod but he didn’t make a single move to pull away. When Harry finally did release him, he, too, bent to retrieve his bag, but Ginny thought he seemed vaguely stunned. “By the Willow, then. Tomorrow.”

“Right. Tomorrow.”

An awkward little pause ensued, during which they stared at one another, for all the world like they’d been frozen in place. Well, at least for Ginny, it was awkward. Malfoy, too, from all signs. He rocked heel-to-toe in his very nice loafers and seemed at a loss as to what to say next. Ginny winced in sympathy when he finally managed to break away from the compelling green gaze.  

“Er, Harry?” Malfoy had never taken his robes off, unlike Harry, but the drape of it had been rucked up by their little bout of stirring practice.  He smoothed his sleeves down and settled out the few wrinkles showing, never quite meeting Harry’s blazing green stare as he did. “Just, um, you’re sure...oh, ah? My wand—I don’t need it, you know. Not really.”

“Yes! Very sure.”

Harry squinted up fiercely up at the other boy; Malfoy looked cowed.

“Certainly.” But he bent his fair head, that odd little smile of his coming and going. “Okay. Right, then; no need to get your knickers in a twist. I’ll be there, I promise. Tomorrow it is.”

Tomorrow was brilliant. Ginny beamed widely, tickled pink with this plan, and silently blessed Harry for it. This would work out ever so much better—for then she could actually plan beforehand how to keep best of sight and yet see everything she needed. And Harry must mean to take his new friend to the Shack, or Ginny would eat her own pointy hat.

“Oh, **bugger**! Argh!” Harry howled, startling everyone present, including an invisible Ginny. “Fucking _no_ , that won’t do either. I know I said the Willow, but you won’t know when to meet, will you? Or even where it’s safe!”

“Er, safe, Harry?”

“Look here, I’ll come find you when it’s a good time, alright? We’re all but on the same schedule anyway.” Harry calmed immediately, offering up a tiny persuasive pat to Malfoy’s forearm. “That way we can slip away and no one will ever notice, I promise. Oh, and thanks for all your help, again. I’d never have mastered that fifteenth turn without you. Saved my arse, you just did—my marks, at least. I shan’t forget it, don’t worry.”

“I—gods, no!” Malfoy flushed pink, all across the bridge of his imperious nose and his cheekbones. “The stirring? That’s not—it was fine! It was—nothing. Nothing at all, really. A trifle.”

“Not to me, Draco,” Harry said earnestly. “Not to me. Well, must rush; really late now! ”

“But, but. Harry? It’s not—it helped me too, you know!“

Harry was _Harry_ , so he didn’t wait about, instead taking himself off in a contained sort of gallop. The door slammed behind him in a hollow, echoing rather final way as he went. Malfoy huffed heavily, staring after, his shoulders drooping visibly  in the sudden quiet. As were Ginny’s, all agog as she was safe in her hidey-hole.

“No...no. It’s fine, and...I. I?”

What had all this mutual touching been about, really? Harry—to Ginny’s recollection, at least—wasn’t awfully fond of being handled. At least not unless he initiated it. And he hardly ever did, not since the War. And the old Malfoy had never touched anyone if he didn’t have to, as far as Ginny could remember. His two goons had, certainly, but not he. He’d not been called the ‘Icicle’ for nothing. Or the ‘Prince’.

‘Course, he’d also been jeered at, mocked with those same old nicknames, just last year. Ginny frowned, recollecting, hearing the echoes of her fellow student’s voices in her head.

“It’s super, really.”

 _Ack_! Ginny jumped; the voice she was hearing right this moment was quite real and no nasty memory, either!

“It was brilliant, _I_ thought. And any time you like, you bloody Harry Potter, you speccy little prat,” Malfoy was muttering to himself very softly and  sounding quite resigned. Looking that way, too, poor dear. “Making me mental, any old time you please. And more fool me, I’m sure I’d be very glad to—I’ll be very glad to…”

Ginny squinted at this pale handsome fellow with the discontented pout and the decided air of someone suddenly feeling very lonely indeed, and felt intrigued all over again. What a stranger he’d become recently, this Malfoy. And what a delicious mystery, too. Exactly how many layers were there to him, this boy she’d written off as total twat before?

“To...Damn and blast it! _Potter_!”

It begged the question. And there were other questions, such as what Draco was going to say next...but didn’t.

Sadly, he didn’t quite finish it, his sentence, nor state aloud exactly what he was ‘so glad’ to do, for Harry’s sake. In fact, for quite another terribly long tension-packed pause after his spat-out swear Draco Malfoy only kept perfectly still, his too-handsome face contorted into a funny expression, and examined the completely mundane lav door as though it might literally be blocking out the secrets to all of the universe instead of just the view of the boring old corridor.

_Ah...hah. That’s...that is—_

Ginny, for her part, swallowed down a quiet and quite unexpected sob and stared piercingly at Malfoy, observing him with all her stubborn will and might, sharp eyes darting. She knew that particular expression; she’d worn it herself! It had only taken her all this time to properly recognize it.

Smitten, the used-to-be-a-right-proper-twat was; very. _Yes_. Oh!

_Oh, Merlin—the poor thing!_

It was funny but Ginny found herself wishing almost desperately that Harry’s wand really had Pointed to Draco Malfoy. Perhaps then he wouldn’t look like that, like he’d eaten a lemon and was gearing his way up to eating another, very soon. With sulphur and salt, and oh, so very bitter, because the lemon itself looked to be so deceptively sweet. Because Malfoy’s didn’t, as a rule. Excepting this one was, and Ginny’s eyes did not lie to her. No, never.

But there was no possible way Romilda’s spell was responsible for this strange state of affairs…was there?

 

[&H&D&]

 

Ginny had herself a damned good inkling of where Harry meant to take them, he and Draco, and his Map was just lying about on top of his trunk when she snuck in his dorm room, and was so very convenient to confirm her idea.

The Shrieking Shack was awful as ever, maybe worse. Dusty and dim and difficult to navigate, what with broken-down old furniture and tatters of curtains hanging about, aping ghosts. It still Shrieked, for instance, and it wasn’t easy to locate a decent place to conceal herself without setting off a whole series of eerie moans, creaky howls, and miffed grumbles. But Ginny managed, all the while grumbling to herself under her breath, and hoping sincerely that this would be the occasion when Romilda’s spell actually showed its mettle, the pesky thing.

For everyone’s sake.

A good night’s sleep had provided Ginny a fresh perspective on events. She woke up realizing she actually felt true sympathy for Malfoy, and that was, honestly, a quite pleasantly refreshing feeling. Much better than the ‘other’ sort—the sort she’d felt the day before.

She’d been in the same case, too, after all. Deep in the throes of it over Harry Potter, the hero-boy, and then also just genuinely caring about him and his wellbeing. . Caring, yes, and there was the key to it, really.  Malfoy apparently cared a great deal for Harry, and that was the same as her. But he didn’t seem to be too, too fixated on Harry being the Chosen One, and that was maybe—er, probably?—yes, all right, much better. It was likely much better a state than Ginny had ever achieved, before it all fell apart between them. For Harry’s sake, at least. Which was the real point to this Point Me of Romilda’s devising, wasn’t it?

Well, that, and then Ginny finally understanding what had gone wrong between them. As she hated not knowing.

Of course she loved Harry, but was it the right sort of love, really? She only just very much needed to know, exactly, what sort it was she felt—or had felt. And even then, the whole plan had never been meant for her benefit, so much, as it had been for Harry’s. Love worked like that, sometimes. Various sorts of love. Er…various.

Somehow—and this was the most excellent bit— her sleeping brain had sorted out for Ginny what she’d really wanted to know about Harry, what she most truly desired to understand. She’d said the words before, of course she had; had ‘talked the Talk’? But she hadn’t quite meant them, not to the degree she felt she might this fresh new day, upon waking, knowing Harry and Malfoy would be meeting up again and in private. Likely that was what had had Romilda so suspicious to begin with and had had her questioning Ginny about her motives, the other day. But?

 _Happy_ Harry. A Harry who wasn’t alone anymore. A Harry who was loved, just for being ‘Harry’—that was what Ginny wanted out of this foolishness, and that might very well be what resulted.

_Wouldn’t mind it for me, either._

She grumbled, naturally, swatting at cobwebs while the time passed super slowly, but she didn’t really mind.

By the time the two of them arrived, a little breathless and with twigs of willow in their hair, she was beautifully ensconced and waiting patiently for them.

“Harry?” Draco questioned right off, peering around at the dump that was the Shack. “What is this place? Is it what I think it is?”

“Well…yes,” Harry was an easy blusher, at times. He peeped over at Draco (Ginny found herself thinking of him as ‘Draco’ this morning, and that was rather nice, too. She didn’t mind it.) “If you’re thinking it’s the Shrieking Shack, that is. Do you mind?”

“Uh…no. No.” If he did mind, Draco did a very good job of concealing it. “Nope.” He only squared up his shoulders and looked even more like a noble Norman knight of yore, caught sneaking out of effigy. Ginny caught her breath harshly; now she could finally understand why the Witches of Hogwarts (and some of the Wizards as well) found this man so damnably attractive. “No, of course not, Harry. Now? What is this, really.”

Malfoy tapped an impatient toe, but Ginny could tell he didn’t really mean it.

“What is this all about? You say you’ve my old wand to give me, but I thought it was lost? Or damaged or something. So, I don’t understand this at all, Harry. What do you even mean by it?”

“No—never!” Harry didn’t hesitate for an instant. “I’ve always kept it, Draco. It was yours, wasn’t it?” He stepped up to where Draco was standing and grasped his hands, capturing them in both of this own.

Draco stared down at him, jaw working slightly. “…Harry?”

“I need to thank you, Draco,” Harry said and Draco’s face fell subtly before it softened, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he assayed a twitchy little  smile. “I need to thank you, with all of my heart.”

“For?”

“For saving me. That time.”

“No…no, _you._ ” Wincing, Draco tucked his chin well down and trained  his gaze on their combined fingers. They were gripping and gripping at one another’s digits; it seemed a desperate connection.  “I didn’t—I never did! It wasn’t me, it was never me, Harry.” Ginny stopped breathing, straining to see, seeking to hear.  “ _You_ saved me, remember? So you don’t need to—there’s no need.”

“No, I do. I really, really do.”  

Harry let go abruptly and stuck one hand up his sleeve. A wand came out, rolling across the palm he opened wide. Not Harry’s own wand—that Ginny did know, for certain.

“Here. I couldn’t have managed any of it without this, Draco—without you. You saved me; you saved us all, really, even if you didn’t know it at the time. But I knew and I thank you. And I want you to have it back again. It’s yours. Take it.”

“I can’t—oh my, it _is_ , isn’t it?”

Draco took up the slim length of polished wood without another word, his fingertips visibly shaking, his face transformed by wonder. He raised it high and sighted down the length of it, and never seemed to notice there was an oily iridescent sheen of many colours attached to it, his wand.

“I’ve…I’ve missed it,” He admitted softly, after a moment, and Harry smiled up at him.  

A sheen of rainbow, the sign of Romilda’s charm, and showing all down the length of twisted wood. Exactly as there had been to Harry’s own wand.

Ginny froze in place—this was huge. Two wands affected? Surely now something would happen? Something to break the incredible tension between these two young men?

“It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, I don’t think,” Harry rushed on, heedless of the tint to Draco’s returned wand, not realizing a thing had changed about it, apparently, and just as heedless of how his two companions (one seen and one not) stiffened as one, , perfectly rigid, and completely attuned to him. He  waved his empty hand to the dust-laden air, palm up and open wide, as if expressing the entire events of one life, compressed into a mere hand-flip. “It worked perfectly for me, but I think it wants to be back with you. It’s been whispering to me for a long time, how it misses you. Please? Take it back again, Draco. It misses you so much. It’s lonely.”

“Misses me. Right.” Draco swallowed hard, easing back from Harry by a single step. “Lonely. Um, ah.”

“Well, try it!” Harry ordered. “Go on now.”

“Ah...sure.” Draco  tried out a hesitant Wingardium Leviosa; a broken footstool rose from the jumble of shattered furniture with absolutely no fanfare and hovered for a moment before another sweep had it settling back again. Perfectly in place. Draco smiled, ever so slowly. “ _Right_.”

“Okay, now?” Harry jabbed a finger at Draco’s breastbone, seeking his attention. Grey eyes zeroed in on him, wide and full of something...something Ginny didn’t fully understand but was pretty certain was in some part gratitude. There may have been a certain sheen to them beyond that—Ginny couldn’t quite see.  “It’s alright, your wand?” Harry persisted. “I hope it is—I’m glad if it is, Draco. You deserve it back, after what you did for me—for all of us. Everyone.”

“It’s…no, it’s marvellous,” Draco whispered, and any residual dampness gathered in his eyes was hidden by lowered lids, falling slowly. “Really, really fantastic, actually.” He didn’t seem to hear Harry thanking him; certainly he didn’t respond to it but only idly turned the wand about in one hand, the subsiding hint of smile just lifting the clean cut of the corners of his mouth. “Oh, Harry. Harry, thank you. This is more than I ever hoped for. So much more.”

“Good.” Harry nodded his chin firmly, satisfied. “And it isn’t. You’re the one who’s more than welcome—gosh, it’s really completely the other way ‘round, isn’t it? But, well, that’s all there is to it, then.” He jabbed a quick finger at Draco’s chest, reaching across the gap between them familiarly. “I’m finished here. I just wanted to make sure it was the same old—that you—that there wasn’t a problem, or anything. Anything…odd. And I didn’t think either of us needed an audience for it, so…we’re all square now? Everything’s good, we’re good, right?”

“Good?” Draco didn’t look up as he nodded. “Yes. Very,” he added slowly.

“Brilliant. Then...we should go now, I think,” Harry glanced about him, taking in the dusty remnants of years, and suppressed a quick full body shudder.”This isn’t the nicest of places, never was. I don’t care to linger.”

“…Okay.”

“Come along, yeah?” Harry was already forging his way toward the exit, barely glancing behind to see if Draco would take the hint and follow after him. “Come on, Draco. We can go out the front door, since we’re here. No one will see us, and it’s not a far walk back to the school. You ready?”

“Oi? Oh, yes. Sorry.” With a start, Draco shifted into a slow walk, eyes cast down. “Sorry, sorry.”

He stuffed his newly returned wand up his own sleeve and fell into step behind Harry, picking his way gingerly through the mess, his gaze on the uneven boards as he navigated. But he didn’t really look like he was seeing them.

“...Yes, I’m coming.”

What? _That’s it? That’s all there is to it?_

Ginny’s eyes popped wide as she watched them depart, the taller form of Draco Malfoy trailing dutifully behind Harry’s shorter one, until the door fell closed with a one last creak behind their retreating figures. She was left alone with her tumbling thoughts, absolutely mystified. Utterly.

Just—only—what?

What had happened? Better yet, what hadn’t?

What of Romilda’s charm, of her Point Me? What had spoilt it, caused it  fail, as it so obviously had? Why had Harry not—didn’t even think to—why had he never made a single move toward poor Draco? And why hadn’t Draco’s old wand Pointed toward Harry?

Surely if Draco had it out like that, waving it about—wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it? Where in Merlin’s name was the bloody sodding magic gone?

 

[&H&D&]

 

“—and I _don’t_ understand!”

Romilda’s face fell, which was a real pity, as Ginny had been desperately hoping her older, wiser friend could tell her what had happened—or _not_ happened.

“I. Just. Don’t!”

“Nor do I.”

“But, Romilda, you know, I saw it. All of it!” Ginny rushed on, pouring out of all of it—or as much, rather, as Romilda needed to know. Limits, wasn’t it? There were limits, and she was a good girl, really.“I mean, the whole thing, from beginning to end. I saw where you cast, Rom, and it must have magicked both the wands, because Harry had to have had them both with him all this time, but it never!” Disappointment was a sharp sting in her belly. “It never Pointed! They never Pointed, either of the sodding things. But, then! How could it? He never even had his out, yesterday, not in the Shack at least! But—and this makes no sense, no sense at all, Rom!—Draco’s old wand didn’t either, when Harry gave it over. Bugger, but it makes no bloody sense!”

“Hmm.” Romilda sighed, readjusting her legs where they were curled up beneath her, Indian fashion, and scowled. “Strange. Harry’s should have, though. He should have felt the urge, Ginny. His wand should have wanted him to, if what I cast worked, and we both saw it did, you remember? Oh, but look, Gin, I’m sorry. I don’t…understand, again _sorry_. I don’t what’s gone wrong with it.”

“All I can say is, it didn’t,” Ginny huffed her exasperation. “It very much didn’t. Now what?”

“Well…” Romilda tapped a thoughtful finger on her pretty chin. “I suppose…I suppose we might wait a little while longer, that’s all. I can’t cast the spell again, you know. It’ll bugger it up completely if I try it twice. I think perhaps we’ll have to see if maybe there’s some sort of delayed reaction, I guess. I don’t know what else we can even do.”

“Delayed reaction?” Ginny frowned, puzzled. “Why would there be?”

“Harry’s never been exactly…normal, Ginny,” Romilda replied gently. “No!” She flapped a hand at Ginny, who instantly flounced in her seat with a dark angry scowl. “No, _no_! I don’t mean like that! He’s not mental or anything—well, maybe he is, after all that’s happened—but what I was thinking was that Harry’s not the usual sort of Wizard, is he? Never really was. So maybe my spell didn’t affect him in the usual sort of way. Stands to reason, really.”

“But what about Draco?” Ginny demanded immediately. “Your spell’s all over his wand too—I saw it with my own eyes, Rom. Why wouldn’t the charm on his wand want to seek out Harry and bloody well Point to _him_? I should think it would!” she added indignantly. “Those two are practically plastered together, these last few days. I never see the one without the other.”

“Huh!” Romilda raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “You’re watching them still, Ginny?”

“Well, of course I am,” Ginny retorted sharply. “I can’t help it, really. Harry’s in my House, right? Weren’t you listening to me? And what I just told you was anywhere our Harry is, Draco is, too. It’s like they’re stuck to one another.  I can’t believe you’ve not noticed it, Romilda. Ron and Hermione certainly have.”

“Yes, yes,” Romilda waved Ginny’s self-righteous snit off as if it were of no concern. “I may’ve been a little preoccupied lately, sorry. NEWTS are coming, you know, and I’m deep into my research. The Governors aren’t going to be any pick-a-nick in the park, not when it comes to our results. But it’s good you’re keeping an eye on them, Ginny. I think you should continue, is all I’m saying. Something else might happen. Well…I certainly hope it will happen. I need it to, for my future career.”

“Hah! Bugger your future career, Rom! What about my sanity?”

Ginny threw herself off her bed with a derisive cackle of brittle laughter and began pacing furiously.

“All I can say is, it had better well, damn it, and bloody damned soon. They’re going to notice me, Rom, I swear it! Always creeping about after them. Draco’s nearly tripped over me twice now, just this morning, when I was watching them from the corner of our Commons. Did I mention Harry’s invited him there, too? Well, he has, and there’s a turn up, those cozying up together. Ron’s still a little appalled by it, believe me; barely coping. And our Harry’s always been a little bit standoffish; you know him. Doesn’t much trust anyone. He’s bound to pick up on it, what I’m doing, creeping round after them constantly, like poor little Dennis used to. It’s only a matter of time before I’m found out.”

“Ah, darling. Just a few more days, ducks?” Romilda coaxed, batting her lashes and trickling her fingers at Ginny, as if to soothe an angry kitten and lure it closer for a nice petting. “I’m sure you’ll see something change, and soon. I can’t have gone that far wrong with the spell. It’s practically guaranteed. Old Ukrainian, you know. Finest of its kind. And I’m good at what I do; you know that.”

“It had better be, Romilda,” Ginny informed her with a darkling glance. “Because I really don’t wish to be hexed by a Malfoy, thanks so much. Been there, done that.”

 

[&H&D&]

 

 “Ohh, I am _soo_ going to catch it he ever finds me out! Merlin, let’s hope he doesn’t, yeah?”

Ginny breathed warily to herself in the hush of the empty dorm as she helped herself to Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, conveniently draped as it was across her brother’s bed, left from when he must’ve last ‘borrowed’ it from Harry.

“Right. And now where are you two little buggers hiding today?”

She growled as she glanced around the room, her tone tetchy in the still of late midmorning. For all of Hogwarts had pretty much sloped off to Hogsmeade for the usual weekend outing and the castle was deserted. Excepting her, left behind on Romilda’s marching orders, of course, blast them. _Bother!_

“Come on, Map, show yourself now. I solemnly swear I _am_ up to no good!”

 _Aha!_ Even more convenient—Harry’s Map was laying about right as he’d left it, on his bedside stand.

Her finger landed unerringly on the two dots indicating Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, which were—just as Ginny had suspected  they would be—budged right up against each other, pulsing like little stars afire, and situated right outside in the central courtyard. _Super_.

“Gits! Just as I thought.  Together again.”

 _Huh!_ Really it was exactly as Ginny expected. For days now the two boys had been always in each other’s company. And here they were again, and very much alone together.

But in the courtyard and _not_ down the village with everyone else, which was unusual for a Hogsmeade Saturday. Even Ron and Hermione had finally gone off after a late breakfast, hand in hand and billing-and-cooing like two disgusting lovebirds, blithely leaving their best mate behind.

Not that Harry was likely to be left alone for long, Ginny had been  positive, as Draco Malfoy had lingered as well, orbiting Gryffindor Table in ever-shrinking circles as breakfast concluded. Probably  with the express goal of whiling away the hours in Harry’s company, Ginny knew, remembering the soppy, soulful look in those changeable eyes of his.

Right, so there they were, cuddled up together on the Map. Which was very convenient of them both, actually, as it meant Ginny could immediately put her borrowed Cloak to good use.

For a spot of spying.

And they were, indeed, discovered tucked up tight, seated side by side on a bench situated discreetly along one of Hogwart’s many pillared walks. Well away from prying eyes, had there been any about to pry.

Only one set, and Ginny silently blessed Brede for that. Now, at long last, she’d hoped to discover whether the magical Point Me had had any effect whatsoever on Harry. Hoped.

“Was just thinking…” Draco’s voice rumbled softly, his lips poised just by Harry’s one ear.

And by ‘hoped’, Ginny really meant that  if the two idiot twats didn’t make some sort of positive move soon as resolving the unbearably intense attraction between them, she’d strangle them both where they sat. And be justified doing it. _Boys_!

“—was thinking, we could walk down later, if you want?”

He lifted a fingertip and idly traced a circle on the back of Harry’s wrist. They were so close upon one another their arms matched up all the one side, shoulders bumping hard together.

“Not exactly a huge thrill, the village,” Draco went on, “but it would be a change for you, at least. And you need to get out more, Harry. You’ve been too much cooped up, lately.”

Ginny silently blessed the Invisibility Cloak as well, as it meant she’d a much better shot at getting near enough to witness absolutely every nuance of interplay.  They’d been terribly elusive the last day or so, the boys, and it had been quite difficult to keep up with constant monitoring. Certainly her newest vantage point provided her some very interesting information.

Their two hands, for one. Their hands were laying just so, fingers tangled to-and-fro, rubbing along in a sort of odd, sweet, arse-backwards fashion, even as Draco employed the very tip of one to caress the thin skin of Harry’s joints at wrist and knuckles.

Ginny peered at Draco’s fingers as she crept quietly around, seeking another view. Draco, she concluded, must quite dextrous. And subtle, too, when with Harry. Leagues beyond what he’d been years before.

“No…”

Harry hummed contentedly and pressed himself  along Draco’s long arm; he didn’t seem to be bothered by the  proximity at all.

“What?” he scolded, grinning, when Draco’s eyebrows lofted at him archly. “And drop by Madame Puddifoot’s? Have a spot of tea with Ron and Hermione?”

He giggled and Draco’s face split into a huge grin a second after. They both chuckled.  

“Bloody well not rather, cheers,” Harry laughed. “Third wheel and all that; eew! No thanks, not for me. I get enough  already.”

“Agreed.” Somehow Draco managed to curve his upper body even more closely to Harry’s and for a moment it surely seemed as though he’d simply settle an arm about him and pull him right across his lap. “That’d be a purely awful prospect, I must say, having crumpets with the lovebirds. Sometimes you do show some sense, Harry.”

“Why, thanks.” Harry smiled up winningly at Draco and they both stopped their chatter, just to indulge in a spot of mutual staring.

It was, truthfully? Well, it was a bit sickening to watch. Ginny quite thought she might die of the sugar, clogging up the air between them.

However, they did nothing more than stare at one another for a just a moment too long to be comfortable. Then both of them instantly glanced off in other directions.

 _Oh, come on!_ Ginny thought, feeling highly exasperated. _Draco, you fool!_

The mental image she’d been entertaining but a second before—snogging on the bench in the bower?—was intensely darling, and tauntingly so, and yet these tossers did nothing to accomplish it!

_Harry? And you! What are you waiting for, ninny? Kiss him, already! Get on with this, you daft pricks!_

She shut her eyes, the better to clench her back teeth together and grind them. When she opened them a moment later, the two prize idiots were once again gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. Both had their lips just a little parted; it was utterly infuriating.

“Of course.”

Draco didn’t shift to complete the suspended motion of their almost-kiss; Harry didn’t either, the recalcitrant sod, and they only just sat there for another age, silent and smiling foolishly at one another. Hands still entangled, the little dastards.

Ginny growled under her breath. _Gah!_ Strangling was too good for the likes of these two. Boiling oil, maybe!

“But…we don’t have to go to Madame’s,” Draco ventured after a little while more had passed and Ginny’s neck was beginning to cramp for all her peeking out from under the cover of the Cloak. “Or anywhere much, really. We could just…walk about. Stroll. See how it’s been fixed up, the village. You like a little hike, Harry. And I’m game.”

“No.” Harry shook his head promptly. “Not interested.”

“No?” They each shifted, moving so they were definitely clasping hands, and quite tightly. And Draco was absolutely staring at Harry with something dangerously hot in his gaze. It was all terribly promising, suddenly; Ginny’s ear pricked up so fast they were buzzing. “If not that, then what? You wish is my command, Harry. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. We’ve the whole day before us, thank Merlin.”

_Snog, damn your eyes! Just—just bloody sodding well snog already, won’t you?_

Ginny, having moved herself in the meanwhile, and hovering about them from all of two feet off-sides, had to belt up quite strictly and prevent herself from stomping a heel hard on the pavers.

 _Why_ would they not simply snog? _Whatever_ was wrong with them? They were holding hands, by Godric’s bloody beard. They were completely rapt, tied up tighter together than string knotted round a parcel. It was purely, purely maddening, Ginny decided.  She’d half a mind to simply nip over, shove them together bodily, Incarcerous the bloody bollocks out of the two of them, together, and stand back, just to see what resulted after, but _no_.

No. Romilda had said Ginny shouldn’t. The Point Me spell would be broken, perhaps, or maybe worse—it could backfire completely. Or maybe Harry would actually realize what was really going on between him and his new best mate Draco Malfoy and decide to act contrary and screw it all up.

Harry just might, the stubborn arse. Mister ‘Contra-contra- _relationship_ ’! And that wouldn’t be so good. Oh, poor Draco.

“Or…we could simply stay here?” Harry mused, after a languorous—and torturous, for Ginny—moment of yet more nicely intense mutual gazing, the stuff of which briefly renewed Ginny’s flagging hopes whilst still teasing them unmercifully. For perhaps her idiot ex had finally his game on? “I wouldn’t mind that. Hogwarts is nice, too, you know. And the food’s free.”

“No? You’re not restless today, Harry?” Draco questioned. “I’d’ve wagered you’d want to gad a little.”

Frowning concern settled upon the pale face as he finally looked away, glancing idly off into the distance—and incidentally, straight through the spot where Ginny was poised, hidden from view. He frowned a little more seriously, blinking, cocking his chin fleetingly; Ginny shivered, abruptly terrified. Had Draco somehow spotted her, despite the Cloak?

But, no. All was well; he was swinging his gaze back ‘round and returned to staring down at Harry, but now with an abruptly stern set to his angular jaw.

“I mean, I would, if I were you,” he chided Harry gently. “It’s been a long week. And a difficult one. Especially for you.”  Draco leant in, inhaling, so his imperious nose was buried partway into the very highest reaching tufts of Harry’s unruly hair, and his puffs of breath were making little tendrils fly up, another act of maybe-intimacy  Harry didn’t seem to mind a bit. “You know, I can’t help but notice you’ve been acting a bit of your own slave driver over that Potions essay, Harry. Though at least it’s out of the way now, thank all our stars-and-garters,” he went on, snorting softly. “And all those poor slugs who gave their gallons of slime to our efforts. I think if I had to stand and stir the fifteenth with you one more time, I’d’ve topped myself.”

“Oi! You wanted to! You _said_.” That had Harry grinning.

Ginny, too. There was still something just so cute about Harry. Apparently Draco thought the same, as well.

“Of course I wanted to; that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a little much, after the twentieth time,” Draco shot back, smiling briefly into an errant black curl. “I must say, you are so bloody stubborn sometimes, Harry, always wanting things to be exactly so. I’d never have thought it, before.”

The fingertips that had never shifted from Harry’s hand pressed  tiny teasing pokes into it; Draco’s eyes dropped as he regarded the white of the indents with all due seriousness, missing completely  the dawning bright light in his companion’s gaze.

“Not that I don’t applaud it; I do, Harry. But...you should want to have a little fun, by now. Break loose and kick up the traces. It’s only natural.”

“Hhhhm, no…don’t much feel like gadding. Or kicking things.” Harry shook his head, sagging back against the cold of the marble bench seat backing and casually taking Draco’s hand along with him. “’M’knackered. Totally. You’re completely correct about that buggering essay; it took it right out of me, all my stuffing. And yes, all right, I agree with you—gadding’s a super idea, and normally I’d be at it like a shot, ‘specially if you came along.”

“All right, then,” Draco crinkled his forehead slightly. “But...why say no, Har—“

“But, on the other hand, if we stay here,” Harry interrupted him, “we’ll have the Hall pretty much to ourselves for luncheon, _and_ all the Library. And that’d be brilliant.”

“You and your precious Library, Harry,” Draco snickered, lounging back beside him and staring innocently up at the blue, blue skies. “Glutton for punishment; you practically bunk there, these days. And I still don’t understand it. I thought you hated all things literary, for the longest time. Now it turns out you live to revise and slobber for swotting. Are you certain you’ve not hit your head recently?”

“Oh, no,” Harry demurred. “I—it was never that. I actually like it, the Library. A lot, really. One of my favourite things.”

That snagged Draco’s attention back at Harry, in double-quick time.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

Ginny’s eyebrows shot up like twin ginger rockets, ascending. Exactly so! There it was, another anomaly in many! She’d noticed it too, Harry’s strange fascination with the one place his mate Hermione had always had to drag him kicking and screaming to, before. And of course Draco had noted it, too. He was the one so fascinated with Harry now, wasn’t he? Any little detail was all fodder for the gristmill of his persistent pash on Harry.

“Huh. I’m almost jealous,” Draco remarked, ever so casually. “A bit.”

 _You should be, you bleeding dense idiot!_ Ginny grumped, but fortunately not aloud. Though she’d have liked to shout it. _You utter_ loon, y _ou should actually be jealous of absolutely everything and everyone, just as I was, once, but instead you are dense, dense, DENSE, like a hedge thicket! And then there’s Harry, right beside you, even thicker! Bloody_ boys _!_

“Strange, isn’t it?”

“Well…you say ‘strange’,” Harry drawled, sitting straight up to stretch his arms way out above his head and finally—finally—easing his hand away from Draco’s barely-there clasp. “About that? I’ve been a little bothered lately. There’s been...something. Something strange. Look at this, Draco.”

He tugged his wand out with a quick motion and regarded it as it glinted in the morning sunshine. Ginny gasped, lurching forward. She saw it was still stained with the multi-colour hue. And apparently now so had Harry.

Was he finally going to Point the buggering thing? Was he?

“Huh?”

“You see this?” Harry waggled his wand about but never in Draco’s direction, then flexed it, so the watery rainbow danced in the sunlit air, rising to float ghost-like above, an eye-inverting illusion. “This isn’t right, Draco. There’s something up with my wand. I think somebody’s done something to it and I’d quite like to know what. And I mean to find out. So, I’m thinking first the Libr—”

“ **What**?!”

Draco nearly launched himself off the bench, slamming his feet flat on the pavers and shouting as he twisted about to grasp fiercely at Harry’s two shoulders. But his arse stayed planted, even though it was clearly an effort to keep it there.

“What?” Harry asked him, forehead furrowing in confusion. “Draco?”

“ ** _Excuse_** me? Pardon me? What is it you are saying to me now, little fool? **Harry**!”

The other boy gave Harry a little shake, the sort of impatient jolt a person gives someone very dear, who has perhaps just announced they’ve found themselves in a muddle. Ginny could tell he was all at once absolutely incensed, fair full of fury on behalf of Harry, and that the anger he burnt with was then battling an overwhelming concern, too, and all of this anxious upset was gone blazing across his handsome face like a bolt of flash lightening.

“Dra—“

“No! Idiot! You can’t just—Harry, what if it’s someone out to—Harry!”

 _Gods, but Draco was a fit sort of Wizard, wasn’t he_? Ginny blinked at him, impressed. _Especially when impassioned_.

That was her first thought, till Ginny went dead still within the folds of her borrowed Cloak. Even the Cloak ceased its constant pretty flow about her, settling into a shimmering hush.

Exactly how deeply did Draco’s feelings run for Harry, anyway? A little pash was one thing, but.

This was something more than that.

“ _How_ dare they—still?— **Harry**? What’s got into you?” Draco’s impatient shouts rang out in the cool sunshine, echoing back from the stones of the pillars; the peace of the morning fled, scurrying away to hide from the brunt of Pureblood’s temper. “What do you even mean, you think someone’s fucked about with your wand?”

He yanked at Harry’s shoulders, pulling the smaller Wizard close and tight, so their noses bumped painfully and Harry winced. Draco never minded it; he glared down at Harry sideways, his thinned lips twisted into a terribly nasty scowl.

“Now, listen to me; talk to me. Are you quite all right, Harry? Are you well?  Has that bloody thing hurt you—does it sting? Are you dizzy? Drop it right now!”

And how was it that Ginny’s stupid dolt of an ex-boyfriend didn’t seem to even notice them, those feelings?

Ginny’s mouth opened, and her tongue tip gingerly touched the centre of her bottom lip, but there were no words, really, that came to mind. None at all. This was shocking. Her female intuition was appalled and insulted—and this Point Me of Romilda’s was clearly quite useless, too.

But Harry was finally reacting. Finally!

“Oi! **No**! But _you_ are, Malfoy! Ouch! Let me go, Draco!”

Harry  shook himself like a cat, shimmying and ducking down his angry face, which loosened the other boy’s iron grip just a little, easing open a small distance between them. He cast a scowl  down at Draco’s fingers where they curled close upon his collarbone, one to each side of his head. Which he was shaking at Draco, furiously.

“There’s no need to pinch my skin off my bones! Take a damper, Draco, do. I don’t believe it’s all that serious, whatever it is. I just want to know what it is. And whatever it may be, it’s still no big deal! You’re overreacting.”

“No! I am not. _Let me see_.”

Draco’s hand darted, nimbly snatching Harry’s wand. He brought it up nearly to the tip of his patrician nose, eyeing it with cautious care, sniffing. He hemmed and hawed for a moment, muttering under his breath and twisting the wand about six ways from Sunday, only to  finally cock a querulous eyebrow at it.

“See?” Harry prompted cheerfully. “Told you,” he added, having recovered from his snit in the interim.

“No, okay…you’re absolutely correct,” Draco replied reluctantly. “There’s nothing obviously Dark here, but...this still doesn’t seem right, not to me. It’s—it’s got a funny air to it. Like it’s been dipped in unicorn blood or something like that. It’s gone all colours of the rainbow, Harry—and I cannot believe that’s a good thing, any way you view it. I’d say… _I’d_ say it’s likely dangerous. And if dangerous, you shouldn’t be carrying it around with you, fool.”

“What? No!”

“Yes!” A fastidious pinch had Harry’s wand dangling in the space between them, Draco holding it as if it smelt funny as well as looked funny. “You mustn’t touch it again, Harry. Here, I’ll just—err on the side of—”

“Yes, I know, caution,” Harry replied patiently, calmly repossessing his wand  despite Draco’s angry snarl. “Except I am, cheers. And it’s not erring. It is _my_ wand, Draco. It won’t harm me. No more than would yours harm you.”

“Hey! Give it here, Harry. Don’t fool with it!”

“Oh, no, you don’t!”

“Yes, I bloody well will!”

There was brief intense tussle between the two Wizards, till they both sat back, breathing hard. Harry, however, was still firmly in possession of his wand. And Draco looked to be entirely disgusted, rolling his eyeballs like that and pulling the most awful of long faces.

“Simpleton!” Draco announced loudly. He examined his fingernails for a second, as judging the buff. “You know, Potter, if you weren’t such a dizzy git already, I’d punch you, just to knock some sense into the head of yours. Moron.”

“I’m not. Really.” Harry ignored his fellow Wizard with panache, fingers curling round his wand protectively. “Not fooling about, not a bit. Noticed this the other day and didn’t think much of it, but now it’s been bothering me. But it’s not serious.”

“Wha—? No! How can you even know that, Harry—how?”

“No, no, hands off, Draco. Enough of that.”

He stuffed his wand  up his sleeve again posthaste—even as Draco uttered a furiously impatient squawk to protest such brilliant idiocy—and sat back once more, stretching out his arms and flapping his hands in a ‘what d’you know about that? Isn’t life  odd?’ sort of manner. As if he’d accepted it all and that was the end of the matter.

Draco, however, clearly hadn’t.

“ ** _HEY_**! Did I not just say—Harry! For the sake of all that’s— ”

“No, stop it. It’s fine.” Harry shut Draco’s protests down by dint of smiling at him, all sunny and bright. An absolute  stunner of a grin, which had Draco’s jaw dropping an inch or so and which sent a familiar old thrill straight up Ginny’s spinal cord. “That’s why the Library, Draco, and not the village, today. Rather want to know why, right? I always think ‘why’ is a good place to begin. Don’t you?”

He was answered with a hearty snort and a glare of finest pedigree. “Of course you’d want to know why, Harry! Who wouldn’t?”

“Well, you, for one, apparently,” Harry shot back with a sideways stare. “Worrywart.”

Draco growled aloud wordlessly, his chest rumbling dangerously as  he heaved his bum and crowded up against Harry, close as they’d been before, if not closer yet.

He tried it again, too, the nipping off with it,  thrusting his fingers  forward, as if he meant to seize Harry’s wand back again, but then was forced to grasp at a whipping-by  sleeve when Harry dodged him. Was left tugging at thin air fruitlessly when  Harry flinched away, the ominous growl morphed to a squawk. He had to settle for grasping at Harry’s forearms and glaring daggers down at him. Fond daggers, Ginny noted.

“Oh no you don’t, Draco,” Harry only chortled. “You can’t have it. I tell you and tell you; are you deaf, now? It is fine and I am fine and I only want to know what’s what, is all. Relax.”

“But you shouldn’t have it either!” Draco all but howled, tipping his head back to face the skies and closing his eyes in a moment’s brilliant blatant despair over Harry’s behaviour. “I really, truly, honestly can _not_ understand why you are being so thick over this, Potter.”

Then that molten gaze was fixed on Harry again, and Draco was showing him his canines in a fast white snarl. Ginny was beginning to wonder when serpents had become badgers; certainly Draco was as stubborn as one.

“Fuck knows what’s been done to it—what might be done to you already! It can’t be safe!”

“Of course it’s safe, Draco. It’s just some silly old Charm, so calm yourself.”

“No! I will not be calm, Harry Potter. You take no care for yourself as it is.”

Draco’s arms slid forward, ducking under Harry’s elbows, ending so  that his hands rested lightly upon  Harry’s waist. If ever, Ginny thought, there was the perfect moment for a snogging, this had to be it.

“Last chance. Hand that damned thing over, right now, you ninny, for I’m not having you just strolling the fuck around brandishing  an unsafe wand, Potter. You may be some kind of bloody hero, you are one, all right? But you don’t have to choose to be foolish.  Give it me! Let me put a protective shield on it at the very least, and take my old one back, for that matter, if you must needs be carrying a wand! It’s not like I need it so badly; I’ve my granny’s old one. I can use that and you can act sensibly for once in your life and use mine.” 

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Draco.” Harry replied, eyes glinting mischievously behind his spec lenses as he peered up against the strength of the sun’s rays pouring down. “You act like an old woman—just like your dear old granny, fussing. It’s only a puzzle, that’s all. Nothing more. It won’t hurt me; it’s _my_ wand.”

“I am not being ridiculous, Harry!” Draco insisted sternly. “ _I_ am being rational, moron. This is clearly a threat to you and my granny is dead and gone, thanks so much for asking, these ten years past, so she can’t very well fuss at you, can she? But _I_ can, and I meant it, every word. Now, give that blasted thing over to me so I can ward it up properly and let’s go find McGonagall, this minute.”  

“No.”

“ **No**?! Potter! What—what do mean, ‘no’, Potter? You can’t just—I will not have you—you’re mental, fucking totally mental! Arghh! And **so** stubborn.”

“Yes, I can,” Harry rejoined and shot all at once up to his feet, shaking off Draco’s clinging fingers  and nearly tripping over Ginny’s hidden ankles along the way till she shuffled them back, and quite quickly, like a bunny. He swept round to shake a finger down at Draco, right under his affronted nose. “I can, I say, and I will, too. It’s my damned wand, Draco Malfoy, and I’m sodding well keeping hold of it, cheers. Like I said, hands to yourself.”

He danced off, Draco’s furious scowl following every move. With another quick sidestep Ginny narrowly avoided Harry’s swirling feet, but it was a near thing. He’d his hands up and he was tripping sideways, even over his own feet, his face aglow with excitement—the thrill of the chase, maybe?

“Harry?” Draco burst out, still incensed but also confused. “Harry, what’s going on?”

“Now? Right now, you mean? It’s pretty simple, I thought.” Harry drew close enough again to lay a hand on Draco’s chin, his fingers curling gently round the fine curve of a hard jaw. “Are you with me or are you not? And keep those grubby little mitts of yours away from my wand while you decide. I know you and Seeking, don’t forget.”

“I wasn’t about to steal it, Harry,” Draco protested faintly, hastily following Harry up from the bench. “I only want you to be—”

“Already working on sorting it, you see? You’ve not even let me tell you yet, been so busy motherhenning me,” Harry burbled on, back turned and off on another caper. He didn’t seem to catch the  trace of hurt in his fellow Wizard’s voice or his quick hard swallow. “I’ve a plan, Draco, a really excellent plan. And I mean to follow through on it, down the Potions classroom—right this minute, this very morning. I’m  finally going to make use of that potion I’ve been working my fingers to the bone over and we don’t need bother Professor McGonagall, either; not her field. Now, come along—Library first, remember? I find I’m up for a little research session. Let’s get practical, shall we?”

“Harry.”

“Draco?”

Harry spun about and subjected Draco to a hard stare.

“What? What is it? Because Draco, look here. At me. Focus. It’s an easy answer, I think. Are you with me or not?”

“I—“

“There’s absolutely nothing to fear, believe me on that. Because it’s not Dark; if anyone knows Dark, it would be me, right? It looks like a prank, really, or maybe someone’s idea of a joke, but it’s certainly not dangerous..or even anything to fret over. It’s just a Charm, some bloody old Charm, and I know what do about those, now. Snape taught me, if he taught me nothing else, and now Slug’s given us another way to make sure of it. Now, d’you want to help me find out what it is or not?”

“Harry, I—“

“Because I am off to the Library one way or another; I’ve a pretty fair idea already of how to use the potion to rid my wand of this charm—and maybe tell us who’s responsible, perhaps. And you may come along with me if you want to or not—your choice. Either way…” He paused, dangerously.”I’m off.”

“You!”

Draco drew himself up, extremely lofty of mien. He jerked up his arrogant chin at the smaller boy, staring him straight in the eye.

“ _You,_ ” he sneered, furling a lip and hissing like a maddened adder. “You...”

One step had him firmly into Harry’s sphere once more and shaking a furious finger under Harry’s nose.

“Are an idiot of the first water, you are the bane of my existence. And you wound me to the quick, to even think for an instant I’d let you do this alone, whatever scheme you’ve cooked up. Yes, alright. I willcome with you, if only to keep you from doing yourself harm, Potter, by poking into puzzles you should be consulting your elders over. But I am _not_ happy—never think for an instant I am happy with this—this abomination against all reason. Or with you, you cumbersome clod. You total—complete—insensitive clod. Inconsiderate, incompetent, incorrigible, an utter arse and worse—“ 

“Okay!” Harry smiled up at Draco, suddenly, and grabbed at a flailing arm, only to grip the hand at the end of it fast and shake it cordially. “Thanks, that’s super. And  I knew you would, Draco—really I did, all along. You’re pretty fantastic when you want to be, yeah?”

“I—I am?” It brought Draco completely up short, this assertion; he gawped, his mouth open and jaw lowering slowly towards his chest. His fingers curled about Harry’s convulsively. “You…you must be joking. You’re playing me, Potter. Buttering me up. Stop that. Stop it at once.”

“No, really,” Harry insisted. “I did.  I knew I could depend on you, knew it from the start. No matter what you said, you’d still come through for me.”

“Of course you can, you pusillanimous twerp,” Draco grumbled, settling into a major sulk. “Keep your gravy boat to yourself, then, will you? As if I’d fall for that! Hmph!” He was still grumbling as they both turned on heel and strolled off, elbows  brushing. “And if we’re doing this, really doing this, then move on.  I want it over with, as soon as we may. Get _on_ , Potter!”

Ginny pivoted, as well, eyes darting after.

“Going!”  Well—Harry strolled and Draco stalked, and wasn’t above poking Harry in the side with a sharp elbow. “And you say I’m the slave driver, Draco.”

“Be quiet, Potter. Haven’t you said enough?”

Ginny’s mouth gaped open as Harry cheerfully took the offending elbow in stride, using it to link arms with his companion and matching up their steps, grinning up all the while with a knowing glint.

“Oh, no. Such a little whinger,” he taunted, batting his eyelashes at poor Draco’s glare and sudden high flush. “All this carrying on, and on. No wonder I’m knackered. My ears hurt. They’ve gone all numb now.”

“Hardly, Harry. I’m not the one who won’t stop—“

“Fussing!”

 _Oh, poor Draco!_ Ginny thought, with an insane rush of sympathy. How could he even stand to bear it and not _do_ something about it? About Harry, being all cute like that, and just right there?

“Such a—” Harry was carrying on with the tiniest of head tosses; so fetching. “Fussbudget. Just the same as your old dead granny, I dare say.”

“I am not!” Draco’s cheekbones pinked darker yet but he refrained himself from snogging Harry senseless, right there on the walk. Or slapping him, which Ginny had to consider to be a perfectly viable second option, when confronted with a Harry like that! After all, they were in public, even if there was no ‘public’ to see. Which was exactly what Ginny would’ve done, had she been in his shoes, she was sure. But he didn’t; Draco was apparently made of sterner stuff than she. “Oh, just shut it, your piehole, you tosser. Shut it _right now_. Be quiet, and leave my honoured ancestors out of this matter. Piss off, you. You annoy me.”

Clearly Draco was not at all annoyed; he was flustered, happily so.

“No, _you_.”

“ _You_ , Harry. Clod. Impertinent git. Idiot.”

“Juvenile.”

Could they even get any cuter, these two?

“...Gryffindor,” Draco snapped in reply, after a long moment. “Yes, that.”

“Hey!”

 _Could_ they, possibly?

Ginny, abandoned some short ways behind them, barely swallowed the single syllable ‘Aungh!’

 It rose up in her throat like wildfire, but she simply had to stuff that cry of insanity straight back down. For it would be of no help to her; this was all well and good, but she! She was landed in some extremely hot water, was she not? For darling or not, this to-and-fro between Harry and Draco was their business, not hers!

 _Oh, bugger_!

And she did, too—stuff it back, like a soldier. Romilda, at least, would be proud of her. No...more a spy than a soldier. She really was turning into a proper little spy, at last, wasn’t she? And spies were sensible, practical people, really. They didn’t succumb to qualms in the midst of their spying, no. They went about their business and got on.

Misgivings thrust firmly aside, Ginny did the next sensible thing: she followed after them, shadowing them at a somewhat safer distance. Especially as her ex-boyfriend showed definite signs of orbiting merrily around the taller boy, like a little dark-haired dervish, whirling.

“You talk and talk, Draco, but still you say nothing,” Harry was teasing away. Clearly enjoying the sight of a highly frustrated Malfoy. “Lips always moving.”

“And I shan’t shut them, either. And, as loony as you are,” Draco carried on valiantly arguing, his voice full of affectionate venom. He put a business-like stop to Harry’s cavorting, too, manoeuvring their linked  elbow joints to draw Harry still closer to him and forcing him to walk faster merely by way of speeding up. “As much of a headlong, heedless, bloody thick-minded prat  as you are, you need someone about to look after you, and it looks like it’s fallen to my sorry lot, now your Weasley’s gone arse-over-end for La Granger—“

“Hah!” Harry laughed aloud, delighted. “ _La_ Granger, is it? Charming, Draco. And you call me a clod. _Really_.”

A delighted Harry was a sight for sore eyes; Draco stumbled, missing a step. Ginny went first hot and then cold, her skin prickling all over beneath her ‘borrowed’ Cloak. Was it to be now, at last, that Draco gave into the temptation?

“You know she’d murder you if she heard you calling her that.”

Ginny bit her lip in breathless anticipation.

“Well, than I shan’t, shall I? Call her that when she might be listening.. But that’s not the point!”

But, no. Draco flung his other wide through the air, gesturing, but he made no move to gather Harry up with it. 

“What point? You’ve not made any, not that I’ve heard,” Harry challenged, grinning. “Just beat my ear off, that’s all.” 

“Hush!” Draco scolded, instead, steadfastly keeping up their pace forward and fast. “Point is, you’ve no one responsible left to mind you. Well, let me tell you, Potty, I am extremely  responsible, and I shall endeavour to make up for your _lack_ , lackwit, and even though I absolutely _despise_ what I think you’re thinking here—the most absolutely lame-brained, loony, batsh—”

“No, Draco—you!”

A twist and shimmy by Harry and he’d turned himself three-quarters, so that their two chests were touching and Draco’s nose all but poked at Harry’s scar. Again!

“You hush, Draco.”

_What?_

Ginny’s eyes popped wide open. Was that Harry nearly hanging off Draco’s chest, now? And pleading with him, too? Was there finally to be some progress made on his end? For Draco was correct—Harry was a thick-headed git, at least over some things!

“Shhh! Pipe down,” he was saying; Ginny struggled to keep up. “And thank you, for minding over me, but I don’t need it. I like it, don’t think I don’t, but I don’t need it. You’re a super friend, the best ever—but, but _do_ cease.   I’m not—no. Not irresponsible, not a bit of it.”  

Harry urged his stalled companion along again by dint of a hard yanking, nearly slamming round the upcoming corner. They stuttered to a halt once more once round it, but more due to Draco, who was glowering down at his smaller nemesis and digging his heels in.

“No? Not irresponsible, Harry? You...you say this, but.” He sighed, heavily, narrowing his eyes as he regarded the shorter boy. “I suppose I just can’t seem to—“

“But nothing. _I’m_ not the idiot here; I’m bringing you with me, am I not?” Harry answered him earnestly. The teasing had fled; his heart was in his eyes. Ginny sighed. Of, if not his heart, at least all his great caring, which always poured out of Harry in great soppy gobs when it came to the matter of his mates. “And you’re pretty sharp for a prissy worrywart, Draco. Pretty…damn…sharp. I count on you.”

“Prissy? Potter!”

“Right you are, though, Draco; I need some help, I admit. And who better than the best partner in Potions I’ve ever had—best anyone’s ever had, I’m sure of it. Slug can go stuff himself if he says different.  But there’s not a thing to really be concerned about, I know it. And you can rail at me later, all you like, once we’ve tracked down what’s what. Right now we just need to get my wand sorted. Today—right now.”

Draco was instantly sparked up again, only grudgingly allowing Harry to tug him forward.

“Hah!” he exclaimed. “You can rest assured I will be railing at you, moron. I may even turn you over my knee and spank you! Bloody little shit, all ‘ _I’m_ Harry Potter and I do what I want’—bloody _mor_ —”

“No, no.”

They finally turned the corner of the pillared walkway, but not before Ginny had one last glimpse of them. The faintest of breezes carried their voices back to her. The Extendible Ear helped a bit, too.

“You’re clearly mistaken. You like that about me; admit it, Draco,” Harry was insisting. “It’s a quality you admire; don’t think I haven’t figured you out.”

“I do _not_. Like. It.”

No! Ginny couldn’t bear it; she had to see! With her own eyes and they couldn’t be allowed to merely walk away from her!

The corner of the walk was quickly gained. She pressed herself up against the cool stone, biting back her excited panting, peering round.

Harry had bumped himself right up along Draco’s side once more, clinging like a limpet to his arm one second and then bouncing off him companionably the next, much as a puppy frolicking in hopes of a walk but yet held tight on to his owner on a very short leash would. It was rather horribly adorable to see; Ginny’s heart melted at the blaze in his green eyes. And then there was Draco,  gazing down at Harry as they stumbled, barely tracking where he himself trod, and wearing upon his reserved features much the goofiest expression of fond exasperation Ginny had ever seen _anyone_ wearing in public…much less a reformed Slytherin. _Or_ a Malfoy.

“I do not like it, Harry.”

“You do,” Harry insisted. “I know you do.”  

“Not,” Draco persisted, right back at him. “Not, not, not. Mad brat.”

“Uh-huh, right. I say you like it. I’d bet Galleons, even.”

“Bugger off. And whether I like it or not, stop your infernal dawdling, Harry. If we are really meant to go look for trouble, I’d rather just get on with it. We’re wasting time and we’ll surely need it for your harebrained plan.”

“Okay! Race you, then.”   

“You’re on, Harry!”

Ginny grinned to herself. _Dearie me_! she thought. _This_! They really had been flirting, the two of them. Honest-to-Merlin flirting back and forth, in the weirdest of all possible ways. Ordering each other to be quiet and then talking away a mile a minute anyway. What idiots! Honestly—boys!

It was...rather disgustingly saccharine, was what. It was...rather...adorable, actually.

 _Oh_!

Her face fell. Ginny shuddered, hiding it in her hands in a sudden burst of sheer despair. She’d rather wanted to see it, once she’d realized what might be going on between them, but then again, she also didn’t, either. What a peculiar sensation it was, really. All through her, bittersweet.

 _Smitten, the both of them. Smitten stupid. And really? Draco Malfoy was_ nothing like _his awful father._

And silly Harry, who was just full of the bloody bollocks, what with this ‘no relationships’ crap he’d pulled on Ginny. Whether he admitted it or not, it was blindingly apparent he was in one, hip deep. With a boy, and a Slytherin, and a Malfoy to boot, the last possible person Ginny would’ve ever thought he’d be attracted to...excepting...maybe?

_Hmmm..._

...But there was really only room for one real thought left knocking about in Ginny’s spinning head, hammering away most insistently. It was humdinger of a thought, and it rocked her back on her heels all over again. These two were on the hunt for the perpetrator of the charm laid on Harry’s wand, and knowing Harry, Ginny was pretty certain he’d go at it doggedly till he came up with a name: Romilda, the poor darling. Two names, because there was no way Ginny wasn’t implicated in this. Wasn’t just as guilty, that was.

 _Oh! I am_ so _going to catch it!_

Ginny held her breath; in fact she felt herself to be terminally frozen in place. What Harry had noticed about his wand—the strangeness to it? It might very well be Ginny’s downfall!

It had all happened so quickly! She and Romilda, the bloody Point Me spell and its bloody giveaway magical residue—all ever so close to being outed, and all because Harry was a knowing sort of bloke, and saw far more than he ever let on. Sly little git, he was; awfully like a Slytherin, sometimes. Maybe that was what had started this, this thing between them? They thought alike—oh, but, no time to think of that at all!

What to do _now_?

What to even _do_? And moreover, what were Harry—and now Draco—scheming between them?

She had to know! She must know!

There was only one viable option left. Ginny must follow!

 

[&H&D&]

 

“And…Revelo,” Harry announced, drawing his wand up out of the Potion with a pair of silver tongs. “There. It’s done, mine. Speak the last Charm, Draco, will you? And then we’ll do yours.”

Ginny quivered, bundled up where she sat, wrapped in Harry’s Cloak again, spying. Nice girls didn’t do this and she was pretty sure she was still a ‘nice girl’.

Mostly.

They’d hurried off to the deserted Library; so had she. Harry had gathered up a load of books and scrolls, Draco protesting all the while, until he finally took half away from Harry and helped carry them away. All down the long sets of staircases leading to the Dungeons and thence straight off to the equally deserted Potions classroom the boys had lugged their bookish booty. And so had Ginny followed after them, nearly tumbling down now and again in her haste.

They’d set up shop at an empty table, and it was like watching them dance, so well did they work together and so quickly. First a real cauldron, not a simulacrum, then all the chopping of ingredients and so forth, masses of them. Then one after the other, taking turns, stepping up to the cauldron and adding ingredients and muttering snippets  of Latin with each pass, faces flushed by the heat and often passing quite close together. Close enough to kiss, had they but wished to. The two boys even shared the stirring, though Draco had gallantly allowed Harry the honour of that tricky fifteenth one he’d been so concerned over.

As far as Ginny was concerned, it was horribly boring and tedious. She wasn’t here to watch a potion being brewed, she was here for some Point Me action!

But at last it was done, final telltale rose-red spark rising to the air, and Harry’s wand was once again just as it had been, pristine, same as before Romilda had cast her altered Point Me. It wasn’t even a moment later when Draco’s wand was pulled out of the cauldron as well, dripping silvery goop, and also rainbow-free.

“All clear!”

“Right, then. Now, let’s see what we shall see, Harry. I do hope it works. Lay them down, will you? Just there will do.”

There was a little silence, and then both young men stepped back from the work table’s scarred old surface, intent on what was happening there. Ginny’s neck nearly snapped as she craned it to observe faithfully.

“I…rather think it has, actually. See?” Harry’s voice was wondering and soft; Draco only inhaled a harsh loud breath.

A quill had risen up, unnoticed before by Ginny but now poised over a blank square of parchment, and was all at once scratching away.

_I am the one, the one you are wishing for, the one you really want._

“What…is…that?” Draco gasped quietly, bending over the parchment as Harry read the words off aloud, just as fast as they appeared. “What does that even mean? Read it aloud, Harry.”

_I am the focus of your heart, the wellspring and the fount._

“Dunno, but it looks like a Love Charm…maybe?” Harry whispered back, before reading off  more words as they appeared.

_I will be your love, if you but allow me._

_I will be your rock, if you only but rest upon me._

_I will be your desire, if you only but Point Me._

_I am the best of your best friends, if you could but so see me._

“That’s…that’s rather nice, actually,” Draco swallowed, when Harry paused. “A nice sentiment.”

“Yes. Yes, it is, isn’t it? But—wait. It’s not quite finished yet.”

_My heart’s my own, as is my wand, and my whole life, before me._

_My wand has chosen you, and ne’er shall it Point Me to strife, nor forswore me._

“Should be ‘forswear’, really,” Draco muttered softly. “Someone’s changed the words around, I think. Probably for the metre.”

“Hush, you!” Harry chided him. “Still reading, aren’t I?”

_This bond is meant to be a beautiful gift, the best my wand may show._

_For the one I Point You will ever be your dearest love, and never, ever your foulest foe._

“Ye…ess,” Draco hissed softly, finally stepping back from the parchment. “That’s it, then.” The quill laid itself down, disregarded. “Definitely some sort of love charm, Harry. A little feeble, here and there, but then maybe it’s a translation? But...you were spot on again, just like in DADA the other day. Congrats, Harry. Hope you’re happy.”

“But?”

“But what?” Grey eyes snapped up to meet bewildered green ones. “What, Potter?”

“It didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?”

“It never worked. Never worked, Draco. This Charm. It’s a Love Charm and it never worked. I’m not completely guarded against things like this; never was. What does that mean?”

 

[&H&D&]

 

It wasn’t even the space of an eye blink for Ginny. The atmosphere changed so suddenly, from amiable and mate-y to furious and heated.

Draco’s face went pale and then twisted, souring fast.

“It means you’re just as impervious to Love Charms as you are to Imperius, Potter, that’s what!”

He flung himself away with a clatter of feet and a swirl of robes, turning his back staunchly against Harry’s bewildered stare.

“It means you’re powerful Wizard,” he stormed on, settling his arms across his chest with a huff of ire, and stomping one heel down  on the floor. “An unusual Wizard, not like any other. And you can’t be tricked by some silly old incantation, alright? Never were, never will be. Why must you always ask such stupid questions, Potter? Isn’t it bloody obvious?”

“Draco?”

“You’re immune, you daft dunce! Bloody immune! Which you knew anyway and so do I, and I’ve no idea why whoever it was even bothered mucking around with this shit. You’re not exactly going to do anything you don’t want to, are you? I can’t see any old half-arsed Charm making you, either. The whole idea was dumber than dumb, completely asinine. Probably some idiot little Witch, trying it on, more fool she! As if it would ever work on you, something as pitiful as that, on the Great Harry Potter.”

“Draco, why’re you so angry?”

“I’m not!” Draco stayed stubbornly with his back turned. He appeared to glaring at the floor, from what Ginny could see, his hands gripping his elbows. “I am not angry, Potter. Nothing of the sort. I’m only just saying.”

“You are. You’re calling me Potter again.”

“Only because—” Draco’s voice broke.

“Because...what, Draco? What is it?”

A silence fell; the only thing Ginny could hear was the dull thud of her palpating heart. Draco let his arms fall at last and nobly squared his shoulders after a long painful moment, tossing the blond thatch atop his head so his fringe flew out. But he didn’t turn round. She couldn’t see his face; neither, she thought, could Harry.

“Because...because you’ve always been Potter, and now it’s Harry, and I don’t want that to end, can’t you see?”

“Huh?”

“Only because it was truly a stupid notion.” Draco flinched, his tense voice rushing on, wide-extended fingers curling into fists.  As if they begged to be holding something hard, so he could snap it in two, and maybe that was his wand he was thinking of?

“Mental. What I was thinking, there for a moment. Of course it’s always been that you’re bored, isn’t it? Now La Granger and your Weasley are forever at it, all that ghastly necking in corners and whatnot. You’ve been left alone, far too much alone, and you’re just bored of your own company, is all, and maybe we have more in common than you thought, and I just happened to be convenient, that’s all. That’s all.”

Harry jumped, startled. “…What? No!”  

“Yes!…Just. I was being an arse, alright?” In a flash, on the cusp of a pause, Draco’s tone changed. He sounded...weary. “I am, always. Always jumping straight to the wrong conclusions, aren’t I? I’m the fool—ah.” 

The taller boy drew himself up all at once, seeming to gain another inch or so just from straightening his spine and throwing back his shoulders.

“No,” he exclaimed, interrupting himself. “Enough—enough of this. Not again.”

Draco spun about and Ginny at last got a good look at him; he was wrecked. Red rimmed of eyelid and scowling as black as any thundercloud, everything about him a misery. It was a fucking tragedy. Though no one else would ever see it as such, if they’d not first witnessed Draco Malfoy being truly happy. To anyone other than Ginny, he’d probably just seem his same old, same old, that cold nasty sod of two years ago.

It nearly cracked Ginny’s heart wide open when Draco gallantly attempted a smile. It was a pathetic smile, but he was still trying. For Harry.

“No, I—ah? No. Let’s forget this, shall we? Let it go, because you know?  I’m famished, really I am, must be gone all odd because of it, yeah? Just now noticed, too. Dead starving, and you? Are you finally hungry, Harry? Because it’s well past luncheon time and we should clean up this mess and go find ourselves some fo—“

“You’re not ‘convenient’, Draco.” Harry, undiverted, was advancing forward. Draco instantly edged away when he noticed, turning to a three-quarters stance and stiffening his spine, for all the world as if he were squaring up for Wizard’s Duel. “Not at all.”

“Hah!” Draco snorted bitterly, the horrible attempt at a matey grin lost to a feral twitch of a tight jaw. For a second his face went stone-cold ugly. “Of course I am. I’m quite, quite serious. I mean...hanging about, nothing else better to do, at loose end. Either of us. Both. The same, for once.”

He glanced down at his twitchy hands, blinking fast. And was Draco again, and not Malfoy.

“Not exactly teeming with good company, is Slytherin. Nor Hogwarts, for that matter. You know that, Potter, better than most. I was bored, too. That’s all it is.”

He snapped his teeth together and thrust his chin out, meeting Harry’s eyes again, bracing himself as Harry drew closer.

“Which is fine, Harry. I’m not saying it’s not fine, never was. Just...may we go now? I think my stomach’s about to eat my liver—must be affecting my mood, yeah? Or the fumes...could be the fumes. It’s awfully close in here, isn’t it?”

“And I wasn’t bored, nor even lonely,” Harry carried on stolidly, though even more quietly, almost whispering. The steady slap-squeak of his shoes on the tiles was louder than his words. “I have other friends, you know.”

“Oh, yes. Yes!”

Draco returned Harry’s assertion sharply, his chin rising high with a silent ‘hmph!’ He stepped back another few paces but the tension crackling between the two boys only mounted.

“I do know, don’t think I don’t. All about your so-called mates, your House-mates, your hangers-on, too. They just don’t happen to want to bother to spend all hours of the day and the night stuck in the Library with you, Harry, dust up their damned noses, necks cramping up like bloody murder. And they don’t know the Potions material as well as I do; never will, and most of them couldn’t give a sliced shrivelfig about some dratted  switch-over in some stupid potion’s stirring and if it’s an eighth of a pinch of asphodel or only a quarter, and couldn’t care less—“

“You care. I know you do.” Harry smiled, his pace never slowing, and Draco flushed berry-bright, instantly, staring wide-eyed. “You do.”

“Well…naturally.” Draco jerked his flaming face away, spinning off again like a mad whirligig. “We’re friends now, aren’t we? In a way.”

“We’re more than friends, Draco.” Harry halted finally, his eyes never wavering from the obstinate back again presented him. “...Draco.”

“Are we? Are we. Harry?” Draco’s reply was dead flat, no intonation at all across the distance between them. It seemed so very far, Ginny mused. So very far, and as if Draco were to take just that one more step farther, all would be broken. “Then why—why?”

In a blink, there was no distance at all, not a bit to be found. Ginny stopped her breathing, entirely; tried to slow her own heartbeat, too. Deliberately. For if she so much as inhaled or exhaled, she thought she might shatter it, this moment.

And it was not her moment to break, nor to mend. It was theirs.

“Why?”

Ginny had never seen anyone move quite that fast in her life; she’d never seen anyone reach out to another with so much desperate anguish. It poured from him, like an essence distilled, Draco’s need. Green sparks from his fingertips, a wild blaze from his eyes—visible, all of it. Magic!

“Why do you never—why can you not see?”

Draco shut those terrible eyes of his and dropped his head down like a stone, laying his cheek alongside Harry’s, rubbing it with his own jaw as if to warm himself by friction. He was gulping away all the while in Harry’s ear, his breath harsh between tight lips, cheeks sucked in to hollows and panting roughly as if he were drowning and Harry’s hair held all the oxygen in the room.

“How it is, how I am?”

Their arms had come round one another; there was no space left between. “...Me?”

“Draco?”

Harry shifted, struggling to catch his breath. Draco only latched on to him all that much more fiercely, squeezing, his hands spanning Harry’s back. He ducked his face into Harry’s neck and literally clung. Ginny’s eyes burned; she was forced to shut them, although it seemed unbearably difficult to miss even an instant of this.

“How hard is it, Harry? How difficult can it possibly be to sort it out, what I want from you? What I’d give you. But…but.”

Ginny would have thought Draco would be shamed, that it would drag him down, as it would have done her, if she’d been in his place, forced into confessing. That he’d have pulled back from Harry by now, humiliated, just going by the way his voice went all wonky, or maybe because of the lost look in his eyes when he stumbled back to look at Harry again, but Draco didn’t, not a bit of it.  If he’d just now been driven to some inner edge, he’d also manned up and turned about to fight it, head on.

A tiny adjustment occurred, a cog slotted itself straight into place inside Ginny’s head, an irritating wrinkle she hadn’t even known she’d felt went smooth as she watched him. Draco wasn’t ‘poor Draco’ at all, was he? No—he wasn’t.

“You don’t. You never do, do you?” But the strain upon Draco, the darkened aura of anguish Ginny perceived, the one she wondered how Harry could possibly _not_ see, it was taking its inevitable toll. “Hah! It’s been a joke, it’s all a grand joke, isn’t it? Pfft! Not even a silly Point Me works right on you, Harry Bloody Potter—not even that. Should’ve known.”

Draco’s head bowed even lower, his broad shoulders slumping down, but he didn’t release Harry and he didn’t look away, either. His courage, it was flagging, even with all the extra Ginny found herself willing him.

“And it wasn’t me doing it, it never was,” he told Harry, sadly. “Not that I’d ever raise my wand to you, not again—and I am so… _so very_ —“

“Please. Stop. Don’t talk.”

Harry’s voice was soft as a meringue, and as sweet, his hands skittering up the plane of Draco’s chest, fingers clinging to Draco’s exposed bent nape and then arrowing straight into his mussed hair, so the white-blond strands poked between his knuckles as they clenched round and Draco’s face tightened in pained pleasure as he pressed his scalp against them, hooded eyes closing slowly. He looked instantly lighter, as if some great fug had lifted, and he could live again.

“Draco. That’s all right, then. Everything’s all right. Just...”

Harry smiled up at him, patently pleased, though his spectacles were knocked askew on his forehead, likely pinching at them both. They were close again together, and Ginny thought suddenly of that first day, in the Library. Like two magnets, these boys, and the horrible instant of them repelling each other had thankfully passed. Reversed completely, and poles aligned.

“Shhh…”

“Harry.”

“No, no, stop it. You always talk on, damn you, always you chatter at me, but you never do get  the point of it, do you? Without me saying it.”

“Har—“

“So I suppose I’ll have to, yeah? Stop spouting rubbish at me, stop talking shit,” Harry grumbled, but fondly; it seemed a very strange reaction to Ginny. “I’m not blind, and I’m not bored, and I was never impervious to you, Draco Malfoy. So—just.” Fierce eyes pinned the other boy; the Gryffindor was suddenly making his appearance. “Don’t ever speak like that, like you don’t matter. Shut up, already. I’m telling you.”  

“What?” Draco demanded, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing. “And what, then, Harry? What would have me do, if I can’t even speak the truth—”

“And kiss me.”

“Kiss you? And _kiss_ you? Why, Harry?”

Ignoring his tortured hair, Draco finally did rear his head back, but only just leaving enough gap between them so as to glare with all his heart down at Harry. His eyes glittered feverishly.

“Because of some stupid spell showing  you _I_ want it? Because you feel pity? Well, I’m not having that, none of it—I won’t stand for it, not if it’s not really _meant_ , and you can just fuck off, Potter!”

“Because I want you to, Draco. And I don’t need any spell anyone tries to cast on me or my wand to know that. I just…want you.”

“Oh, Merlin— _Harry_. Do you? Do you, really?”

Ginny’s lungs were bursting with pressure. Literally. But it didn’t matter a jot, the momentary light-headedness or the little pain in her chest, panging bright. Not when Draco’s face lit up at Harry’s decisive nod, glowing from chin to brow, and not when his curious pale eyes went all molten light-filled and brilliant, like diamonds bursting in silver. Not when he looked as if he’d just been handed everything he’d ever wanted, wrapped up in a bow and on a silver platter. And not when Harry’s answering stare was just as gem-faceted, prickly sharp at first with irritation, but then melting into pools of patiently long-suffering mossy-covered affection. Ancient affection.

“Of course I do.”

 _Teasing_ affection, Ginny realized. The sort that had grown and grown, and been gently nurtured, so its roots were as strong as any oak tree’s. As if to prove it, Harry pursed his lips and popped a tiny kiss to Draco’s bottom lip, nipping at it as he drew away.

Draco’s tongue peeped out as he licked at the little mark. He looked star-stuck, completely addled, and oh, so happy.

“Didn’t I say to stop talking? Now, _stop talking_.”

 

[&H&D&]

 

Ginny was also a bit star-struck by it. By _them_.

If there was magic in that Potion’s classroom, it wasn’t any modified charm of Romilda Vane’s at work. It was two mouths, each stifled against the desperate craving press of the other, and it was two sets of boyishly thin arms, wrapped ever so close, hard fingers digging into two strong young backs and firm arses, as if their hands were finding all the reality each had ever needed, right there. Right there.

Absorbing each other.

If there was any magic at work, it was part-and-parcel of  Draco’s low happy murmurs of “Harry, Harry,’ and then those never ceasing except when punctuated by littlest gasps and small whimpers—or a longish wet hot silence, a steamy one. Any number of those, and the sort that left Ginny’s brain seared after.

It was the dazzling force glowing deep in Harry’s eyes, wide open now and again with his rapid blinking, once his spectacles had been knocked off completely, and visible to see for an intent watcher, bent on not losing an instant to inattention. It was the palpable golden surge of spectral energy rocketed off their arms and the points of their bending elbows, from  the wrap of one knobby shin bone ‘round another one, this especial magic: it lit up the room. The sort  of magic which crackled blue-violet through Harry’s wild hair and jumped cheerfully over to Draco’s tumbled white tresses, gingering them up almost to mimic Ginny’s shade, and then descended like a golden fall of protective drapery, layering them  both up as surely and securely as Harry’s Invisibility Cloak still hid Ginny.

Magic was all about them, settled deep in the press of thrusting hips, rocking faster—and it was no insignificant Point Me causing it; never had been. It lay nascent in the grunt and huff of their mingled breaths, and oozed from between their twisting, grasping hungry digits, slicking up their sweaty palms when one rubbed a streak of  passion down the other’s spine, grabbing a handful of arse after. It shone from pinkened cheeks and the flash of shy—and daring!—smiles. A glitter, a glimmer, a burning pyre, but magic, magic...all the same. It was everywhere about them, these fine young fellows having themselves what had to be  the filthiest snog of a lifetime.

 _Snog_?

It struck Ginny, with the force of a small sharp blow to the midsection, albeit a soft one, but one which reverberated. What this snog meant, what it portended.

This was that legendary rose-gold spark, as perfectly formed as the one that had risen from Harry’s cauldron earlier. This was the coruscating fire that had never been quite born fully between Ginny and Harry, and it was a blessing to know this, at last. For she’d not lost a thing in giving it up, not a single sodding thing had she lost to their gaining. Not a smidgeon, nor an _nth_.

This—this was their magic, Harry’s and Draco’s own, in its purest form yet, at least that Ginny had ever yet witnessed. They’d created it between them, something new, something brilliant—something perfect.

It was fitting, perhaps—or so Ginny thought, when she could think, as Merlin, this was bloody hot, the pretty lightshow aside! It was making her perspire and her knickers...well, she’d likely need to change them as soon as she could escape undetected, but still?

It was rather eminently fitting that she was sitting again in a classroom, in good old Hogwarts, and learning of something new. Or perhaps it was an old lesson, but worth repeating—who knew?

Whatever. Ginny simply couldn’t wait to tell Romilda!

 

 [&H&D&]

 

Nice girls absolutely didn’t wait about to spy on two strapping young lads having a brilliantly sloppy snog. They simply didn’t.

Speaking of waiting? And spying? She was done with those, now.

Ginny, untangling her cramping legs from their bent position and being as quiet as she possibly could manage, which was very, after so much recent practise (though she sincerely doubted Harry and Draco would notice anything short of the ceiling falling in on them) resolved herself of this as she rose to her feet. She resolved to tell Romilda of her findings as well. Although not all of them. There were limits.

Nice girls also generally didn’t wish-and-want after someone else’s boyfriend, either. It was pretty well brilliant of her that she didn’t, then.

Ginny grinned to herself, belting up and finally tearing her eyes away from the two boys. She really must go, and quickly, and leave them to it.

The Point Me was an awfully enchanting incantation, though. Just as Draco had remarked—a lovely sentiment. Poetic, even. But not always effective, apparently. Not effective at all, in the case of Harry.

Or…maybe Romilda’s Point Me  only wasn’t necessary at all when the Wizards in question were already hip deep in love. That is to say, if they’d already managed to get a lot closer together than the distance allowed by  a wagging wand tip, and all on their own. That might be it, the solution. To why Rom’s spell had never worked as promised.

However and whatever it was, Romilda could sort it, and Ginny could help her, to make up for this abject failure. For there must be other young people at Hogwarts who had no idea their True Loves were but a step away, or that a pleasant face glimpsed now and again at another House Table might the one they’d been waiting for, all these years. And poor Romilda still sorely needed her proof. For her NEWTS.

That could be Ginny’s next great thing, now that these two idiots were all right and tight. On their own, as it should be.

And maybe…just perhaps? One day Ginny herself might even consent to be Pointed straight to her own. Her very own  love. It could happen.

It could happen.

It was magic, wasn’t it? Any old thing could happen. And did, too.

 

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